When curtain fabric transforms from a piece of cloth to a spatial solution, the industry's value coordinates are being rewritten. On August 12, the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Home Textile Association's Fabric Branch was held in Keqiao, Shaoxing. The data speaks volumes: in 2025, the China Textile City's transaction volume exceeded 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises, annual output value approaching 70 billion yuan, and cross-border online trade reaching 800-900 million USD. Yet the flip side is that while production, sales, and exports grew steadily in the first half of the year, profits remained under pressure, and exports showed a trend of volume growth with price decline.
Event Background
The meeting, themed "Design Breakthrough, Technology Empowerment, Global Symbiosis," directly addressed industry pain points: real estate downturn, rising raw material costs, weak demand, and trade fluctuations. Zhu Xiaohong, president of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, noting that while industry scale stabilized and the tech-standard system improved, the fabric sector was notably dragged by real estate. Liang Pengcheng, vice president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized that this year marks the start of the "15th Five-Year Plan," and new quality productive forces are not optional but a survival issue. Keqiao, described as an "economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth," is striving to push the curtain fabric industry toward high-end, digital, fashionable, branded, and international development through professional exhibitions, innovation, and open cooperation.
Industry Impact
The meeting's message is clear: home textile fabric must shift from scale expansion to value growth. This involves reconstruction on three fronts. First, design. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant for Tianyu New Materials, pointed out that the industry is mired in price wars and homogeneity. The key to breaking through is returning to users' real home scenarios—addressing the needs of 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding, and home office setups, combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors and layered textures. Building a product matrix of image, profit, and traffic products creates brand recognition and pricing power. This means original design is no longer just an aesthetic issue but a moat for brand bargaining power.
Second, technology. Associate Professor Ji Feng from Donghua University introduced digital achievements that are changing production logic: AI-assisted color matching using vast dye databases solves digital printing color differences, and CNN-based fiber image libraries enable non-destructive fabric composition identification, replacing traditional chemical tests. Phase-change temperature control and nano-modified functional fabrics are also entering industrial application. What does this mean for small and medium factories? Lower testing costs, shorter sampling cycles, and reduced R&D barriers that were once only affordable for large enterprises.
Third, AI and globalization. Zhao Lu, global VP of Collov AI, proposed that spatial AI is key to improving efficiency in the fabric industry. World models enable spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click realistic rendering, saving hundreds of thousands in physical sampling and photography costs. Contract soft furnishing is the priority application scenario. He predicts that within three years, AI can be scaled in warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes, emphasizing that fabric physical data is a company's long-term core asset. Zhang Xiaocun from Modern Media showcased new export channels using TikTok data: the platform covers over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, and home furnishing categories in Southeast Asia and Latin America are growing fastest globally. Immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt traceability livestreams have become hit strategies.