When a curtain fabric cluster's annual output value approaches 70 billion yuan, the industry collectively faces the awkwardness of squeezed profits—the answer from the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch annual meeting is not to expand capacity, but to switch engines. Held on August 12 in Keqiao, Shaoxing, the meeting brought together associations, universities, brands, and cross-border platforms under the theme "Design Breakthrough, Technology Empowerment, Global Symbiosis," which is essentially a systematic response to the dilemma of competing in a saturated market.
Industrial Coordinates: Keqiao's Scale and Hidden Worries
Keqiao is known as an "economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth," and the data supports it: in 2025, the China Textile City's transaction volume exceeded 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises and an annual output value of nearly 70 billion yuan, plus cross-border online transactions of 800 to 900 million US dollars. But behind this scale, the industry's production, sales, and exports in the first half of the year grew steadily, yet weak demand and trade fluctuations remain pressing concerns. Zhu Xiaohong, president of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the 14th Five-Year Plan and directly pointed out: the fabric industry is impacted by the real estate downturn and rising raw material prices, corporate profits are under pressure, and exports show a trend of rising volume but falling prices. This means the old strategy of competing on volume is failing; if scale advantages cannot be converted into brand and quality advantages, Keqiao's cluster may fall into the trap of being "big but not strong."
Value Reconstruction: From Manufacturing Mindset to Brand Mindset
The core judgment of the meeting is that the home textile fabric industry is at an inflection point from "scale expansion" to "value growth," and new quality productivity is no longer an option but a survival issue. Liang Pengcheng, vice president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, outlined three paths—technology empowerment, green upgrading, and consumer insight—which essentially pull competition from cost to technology and brand. For buyers, this means the criteria for selecting suppliers will change: whoever can combine temperature control, antibacterial functions with healing colors and layered textures will capture a share of the sleep economy. The "image, profit, and traffic product matrix" proposed by Tianyu New Materials illustrates that original design is becoming a moat for pricing power, not just decoration.
Technology Landing: AI Moves from Concept to Workshop
AI applications in the fabric industry are no longer just PPT visions. Donghua University associate professor Ji Feng demonstrated intelligent precise color matching and a fiber polarization image library, directly solving digital printing color difference and fabric composition detection pain points, meaning laboratory technologies now have operational interfaces for industrial transformation. Collov AI's spatial AI proposal is more aggressive: using world models for spatial analysis and material replacement, saving hundreds of thousands in offline sampling and real shooting costs, and prioritizing commercial soft furnishing as the first landing track. For factories, this is not only a cost-reduction tool but also a variable that reshapes the competitive landscape—in the next three years, warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes may first achieve large-scale embodied intelligence applications. Whoever accumulates fabric physical data first will hold long-term assets.
New Overseas Channels: Blue Ocean Opportunities for SMEs
Globalization is no longer exclusive to leading enterprises. Media data from Modeng Media shows TikTok 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. This provides a realistic path for nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises in Keqiao: through immersive short videos, local influencers, and origin traceability live streams, small factories can directly reach overseas consumers. The three-tier cross-border product matrix—basic, functional, and co-branded—offers a ladder from selling goods to building brands. But note: going overseas is not about moving domestic inventory abroad; it requires reconstructing product expression through localization, which demands new collaboration between factories and cross-border platforms.