When the number of curtain fabric enterprises approaches 8,000 and annual output value exceeds 70 billion yuan, Keqiao, an 'economic powerhouse supported by a piece of cloth,' has become the best window to observe China's home textile transformation. On August 12, the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting was held here, conveying a core signal: the industry is bidding farewell to the old narrative of scale expansion and shifting to redefining growth logic through design, technology, and globalization.
Data Reveals Challenges Behind Scale Advantages
Sun Weigang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Working Committee of China Textile City, provided data outlining Keqiao's scale: in 2025, the transaction volume of China Textile City exceeded 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises and an annual output value of about 70 billion yuan, and cross-border online trade of 800-900 million USD. However, behind the scale, Zhu Xiaohong, President of China Home Textile Association, pointed out hidden concerns during the '14th Five-Year Plan' review: due to the downturn in the real estate sector and rising raw material costs, corporate profits were under pressure in the first half of the year, and exports showed a trend of 'volume growth with price decline.' This means that the model of relying solely on capacity and low prices to capture markets has hit a ceiling, and the industry must find new value anchors.
Value Reconstruction: Three Paths and Six Major Tasks
Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized in his speech that the industry should adhere to the directions of technology, fashion, green, and health, and follow three paths: technology empowerment, green upgrading, and demand leadership. Zhu Xiaohong, based on the national '15th Five-Year Plan,' proposed six major tasks: improving the global diversified supply chain, deeply tapping domestic soft furnishing renewal demand, activating new quality productive forces through AI and industry-university-research integration, building independent brands of Chinese home textile aesthetics, implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards, and establishing healthy sleep laboratories. These tasks directly target industry pain points—shifting from manufacturing thinking to brand thinking, and from single-product manufacturing to overall soft furnishing solution service providers. For buyers, this means that future supplier selection criteria will no longer be just price and capacity, but design capability, technological content, and green certifications.
Practical Breakthroughs: Design, Technology, AI, and Going Global
The meeting broke down strategic consensus into four actionable dimensions. In terms of original design, Lin Shaowu, Brand Consultant of Tianyu New Materials, proposed that the core breakthrough is to return to real user home scenarios, focusing on new demands such as 300 million people with sleep disorders and separate bedding for couples, combining temperature control, antibacterial and other functions with healing colors, and building a product matrix of image products, profit products, and traffic products to create brand pricing power through unified design language. This reminds factories: the way out of homogenization is to segment scenarios, not continue to compete on low prices.
On the technology transformation front, Ji Feng, Associate Professor at Donghua University, showcased cutting-edge university technologies: AI-based intelligent color matching to solve digital printing color differences, and CNN deep learning to establish fiber polarization image libraries for non-destructive rapid identification of fabric components, replacing traditional chemical testing. Once these technologies move from the laboratory to production lines, they will significantly reduce testing costs and time, which is a substantial benefit for quality control in small and medium-sized enterprises.
The AI application was the most watched segment. Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, pointed out that the costs of sampling, real-scene photography, and scenario expression in the fabric industry are high, and spatial AI can achieve spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click generation of realistic scenes through world models, saving hundreds of thousands of yuan in offline sample mailing and real shooting. He judged that commercial soft furnishing is the priority landing track, where AI standardized solutions can enhance engineering bidding competitiveness; embodied intelligence will only be scalable in warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes within the next three years. For factories, this means AI is not a distant sci-fi but a tool to reduce costs and increase efficiency now.
Regarding export growth, Zhang Xiaocun, Partner of Modern Media, based on TikTok data, pointed out that 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 tactics such as immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streaming, and suggested cross-border stores build a three-tier product matrix of basic, functional, and co-branded products. This provides replicable paths for small and medium-sized home textile enterprises to go global, especially leveraging the supply chain advantages of the Keqiao industrial belt to directly reach overseas consumers through content e-commerce.
Industrial Impact: The Demonstration Effect of Keqiao Cluster
As a curtain fabric industry cluster, the transformation practices of nearly 8,000 enterprises in Keqiao have a bellwether significance. The signals released by the annual meeting indicate that the association will regularly hold industry exchanges and supply chain docking meetings to promote original design innovation, scientific and technological achievement transformation, and the integration of domestic and foreign trade. For other national industrial clusters (such as Shengze and Nantong), the Keqiao model provides a reference: strengthening industrial links through professional exhibitions, stimulating momentum through innovation and transformation, and expanding market space through open cooperation. It is foreseeable that in the coming years, competition in the home textile industry will shift from single-dimensional manufacturing to comprehensive capability competition in 'design + technology + channels.'