With an annual turnover of 440 billion yuan, nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises, and cross-border online transactions of 800-900 million USD, Keqiao's status as a global curtain fabric hub was reaffirmed at the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch annual meeting. Yet beyond the numbers, the meeting signaled a clear shift: the home textile industry is moving away from scale-driven growth toward value creation anchored in design, technology, and globalization.
Industry Landscape: Scale Meets Pressure
Sun Weigang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Working Committee of China Textile City, revealed these figures, underscoring Keqiao's robust industrial base. With a complete textile supply chain and annual output value nearing 70 billion yuan, Keqiao truly deserves its title as an "economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth." However, Zhu Xiaohong, President of China Home Textile Association, candidly reviewed the 14th Five-Year Plan achievements: while H1 production and exports grew steadily, profits faced pressure due to real estate downturn and rising raw material costs, with exports showing volume growth but price decline.
This means the old low-price, high-volume growth logic has hit its ceiling. For buyers, price advantages are being eroded by rising costs; for factories, mere capacity expansion no longer translates into profit gains. The industry needs new value anchors, and the keywords repeatedly emphasized at the meeting—"design breakthrough," "technology empowerment," and "AI efficiency"—point precisely in those directions.
Transformation Pathways: From Four-Dimensional Drive to Value Reconstruction
The meeting deconstructed the path to breakthrough into four dimensions: design, technology, AI, and going global. On the original design front, Lin Shaowu, brand consultant for Tianyu New Materials, tackled the industry's homogeneity pain point, advocating a return to real home scenarios. He suggested addressing the needs of 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding, and other new demands by combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors, while building brand recognition and pricing power through a product matrix of image, profit, and traffic products.
On the technology front, Associate Professor Ji Feng from Donghua University showcased cutting-edge achievements in digitalization and functional textiles: using massive dye databases and AI intelligent color matching to solve digital printing color differences, CNN deep learning for non-destructive fabric composition identification, and functional fabric processes like phase-change temperature control and nano-modification. These technologies mean home textile products will evolve from "a piece of cloth" to "functional solutions," offering factories a path to differentiation.
AI's implementation is even more disruptive. Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, pointed out that spatial AI can achieve space parsing, material replacement, and one-click realistic rendering through world models, saving high costs of physical sampling and photography. He specifically noted that fabric physical data will become a long-term core asset for enterprises, and those who adopt spatial intelligence early will reshape the competitive landscape. This is particularly important for foreign trade companies—building cross-border material libraries and improving engineering bid efficiency could be key to opening overseas markets.
Going Global and the Future: Incremental Space for SMEs
Zhang Xiaocun, partner at Modern Media's home textile business, brought encouraging overseas data: TikTok covers over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, and home furnishing categories in Southeast Asia and Latin America are growing fastest globally. This means that globalization, once a track reserved for leading enterprises, is now opening to SMEs through short videos, local influencers, and supply chain livestreams.
Notably, Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized in his speech that this year marks the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan, and new quality productive forces are not an option but a matter of survival. The three paths he proposed—technology empowerment, green upgrading, and consumption insight—provide a clear action framework. Zhu Xiaohong's six major goals, including improving global diversified supply chains, tapping domestic soft furnishing renewal demand, and implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards, offer more concrete directions.