When curtain fabric output approaches 70 billion yuan and the light textile city's transaction volume exceeds 440 billion yuan, Keqiao, an 'economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth,' shows no sign of resting on its scale. On August 12, the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting was held here, with the industry's verdict being: traditional growth models have peaked, and home textile fabric must shift from scale expansion to value growth, or it will be trapped in the quagmire of existing-market involution. The meeting not only set the tone for the industry at the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan period but also delivered a full-chain methodology covering design, technology, and channels.
Data Behind Industrial Pressure
Two sets of data deserve attention. Keqiao has nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises, with an annual output value of nearly 70 billion yuan and cross-border online transactions reaching 800-900 million US dollars—the cluster's scale remains massive. However, the industry's exports in the first half showed volume growth with price decline. Combined with real estate downturn and rising raw material costs, corporate profits are under pressure. What does this mean? Scale advantages are being diluted by cost increases and homogeneous competition; simply relying on volume no longer translates into profits. Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, pointed out that weak demand and trade fluctuations remain realistic pressures, but home textiles, being close to people's livelihood consumption, have huge potential. The industry must transform by focusing on technology, fashion, green, and health.
Zhu Xiaohong, President of the China Home Textile Association (CHTA), provided a more systematic assessment. Reviewing the achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan, she mentioned that industrial scale is stable, the sci-tech standard system is improved, original design and brand building are accelerating, but the fabric industry is clearly dragged down by real estate. Looking toward the 15th Five-Year Plan, she proposed six major goals: improving the global diversified supply chain, deeply tapping domestic soft decoration renewal demand, activating new quality productive forces with AI and industry-academia-research integration, building independent Chinese home textile aesthetic brands, implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards, and establishing sleep health laboratories. These six directions essentially answer one question: when incremental dividends disappear, where does the next growth curve for home textile fabric come from?
Design and Technology: Two Keys to Break Homogeneity
Homogeneity is the root cause of price wars in the fabric industry. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant of Tianyu New Materials, directly addressed the pain point: the core of breaking the deadlock is returning to users' real home scenarios. His path focuses on the 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding, and new demands like working from home, combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors and layered textures, and building a product matrix of image products, profit products, and traffic products. This means original design is no longer just flower pattern innovation but must become a moat for brand pricing power—establishing recognition with a unified design language, shifting from single-product sales to whole-home soft decoration lifestyle output.
On the technology side, breakthroughs are also emerging. The technology sharing by Ji Feng, Associate Professor at Donghua University, shows that AI is changing the underlying logic of the textile industry: intelligent precise color matching through massive dye databases to solve digital printing color difference issues; establishing fiber polarized light image libraries to use CNN deep learning for non-destructive rapid fabric composition identification, replacing traditional chemical testing. These technologies are no longer concepts in labs but industrial solutions that can be directly transformed for curtain and bedding enterprises. For factories, this means lower testing costs and shorter sampling cycles, with efficiency gains directly converting into profit margins.
AI and Going Global: New Growth Channels for SMEs
Regarding AI's value to the fabric industry, Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, provided three concrete application directions: first, using world models to achieve spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click real-scene generation, saving high costs of offline sampling and real shooting; second, taking commercial soft decoration as the priority landing track, with AI standardization solutions significantly improving engineering bidding competitiveness; third, embodied intelligence can only be scale-applied in warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes within three years. His assessment is clear: fabric physical data is a long-term core asset for enterprises; the fabric industry will not be eliminated by AI, but enterprises that first deploy spatial intelligence will reshape the competitive landscape. For SMEs, this means they don't need to develop large models themselves; they can simply use ready-made spatial AI tools to reduce sampling costs and improve proposal display efficiency.
On going global, Zhang Xiaocun from Modern Media used TikTok data to analyze home textile cross-border paths: the platform covers over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, and home furnishing categories in Southeast Asia and Latin America are growing faster than the global average. He shared practical tactics like immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt origin live streaming, and suggested cross-border stores build a three-layer product matrix of basic, functional, and co-branded products. This is a clear incremental signal for nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises in Keqiao—cross-border e-commerce is no longer exclusive to leading enterprises; small and medium factories can also leverage traffic dividends to reach overseas consumers.
Keqiao Sample and the Industry's Next Step
Keqiao was repeatedly highlighted at the meeting, not only for its impressive data but also because it represents a possibility for transformation. Sun Weigang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Working Committee of China Textile City, introduced that Keqiao is focusing on building a modern 'international textile capital,' advancing the curtain fabric industry toward high-end, digital, fashionable, branded, and international development. From strengthening industrial connections through professional exhibitions to stimulating industrial momentum through innovation and transformation, Keqiao's practice shows that cluster upgrading is not achieved by individual enterprises fighting alone but requires systematic coordination of platforms, policies, technology, and channels.
The CHTA stated that it will continue to hold thematic industry exchange meetings and industrial chain docking events, linking Keqiao and other industrial clusters, to promote original design innovation, technology commercialization, and dual circulation of domestic and foreign trade. For the industry, this means home textile fabric in the 15th Five-Year Plan period is no longer simple manufacturing but a full value chain reconstruction from design to channels, from technology to branding.