While curtain fabric enterprises are still agonizing over a few cents per meter, this year's annual meeting offered a different approach: abandon scale obsession and shift to value growth. On August 12, the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting concluded in Keqiao, Shaoxing. Data revealed a striking contrast: Keqiao has nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises with an annual output value of nearly 70 billion RMB, but cross-border online transactions only reached 800-900 million USD. This gap between output and export scale precisely reflects the transformation potential of this traditional cluster.
Background
The timing of the meeting was delicate. Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, admitted that in the first half of the year, production, sales, and exports grew steadily, but weak demand and trade fluctuations persisted. Zhu Xiaohong, President of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan: stable industrial scale, improved technical standards, but the fabric industry suffered from real estate downturn and rising raw material costs, with profits under pressure and exports showing volume growth with price decline. At the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan, new quality productivity is repeatedly emphasized, no longer an option but a survival issue.
Keqiao, an "economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth," saw its textile city transactions exceed 440 billion RMB in 2025, with a complete textile industry chain. Facing internal competition, the local government is promoting high-end, digital, fashionable, branded, and international development through professional exhibitions, innovation, and opening-up. Sun Weigang, Deputy Secretary of the Party Working Committee of China Textile City, used these figures to outline the cluster's confidence and hinted at future directions.
Industry Impact
Original design and AI empowerment emerged as two key breakthroughs. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant at Tianyu New Materials, targeted price competition and product homogenization, proposing a return to real home scenarios, focusing on 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding for couples, and home office needs. He suggested combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors and layered textures, building a product matrix of image, profit, and traffic items. This means fabric companies are no longer just selling cloth but exporting lifestyles, building brand recognition and pricing power through unified design language.
Donghua University Associate Professor Ji Feng shared practical technologies: AI intelligent color matching to solve digital printing color differences, and CNN deep learning for non-destructive fabric composition identification, replacing traditional chemical testing. Once implemented, these technologies will significantly reduce testing and sampling costs for SMEs. Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, proposed that spatial AI is key to improving efficiency in the fabric industry, using world models for spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click realistic rendering, saving hundreds of thousands in offline sampling and photography costs. Contract soft furnishing is a priority landing track, and embodied intelligence can be applied in warehousing, sorting, and inspection within three years. He emphasized that fabric physical data is a long-term core asset—reminding factories that accumulating data is more valuable than hoarding inventory.
Going global is another growth channel. Zhang Xiaocun from Modern Media cited TikTok data: the platform covers 150+ countries with 2 billion monthly active users, and home furnishing categories in Southeast Asia and Latin America are growing fastest globally. He shared strategies like immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt live-streaming, and suggested building a three-tier product matrix: basic, functional, and co-branded. For Keqiao's nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises, this means cross-border e-commerce is no longer exclusive to leading companies; SMEs can tap into overseas blue oceans through platform traffic dividends.
Practical Recommendations
For Buyers - Pay attention to upgraded fabric functionalities, incorporating temperature control, antibacterial, and anti-mite health indicators into procurement standards, not just price. - Prioritize suppliers with AI intelligent color matching and rapid sampling capabilities to shorten development cycles and reduce inventory risk. - Evaluate whether suppliers have established fabric physical databases to reserve interfaces for future spatial AI applications and customized services.
For Foreign Trade Enterprises - Leverage traffic dividends on platforms like TikTok, combined with Keqiao industrial belt live-streaming, to create immersive content and reduce customer acquisition costs. - Build a layered product matrix: basic items for volume and traffic, functional items for premium pricing, and co-branded items for brand awareness. - Deploy AI spatial intelligence tools for virtual showrooms and cross-border asset libraries, reducing photography and sampling costs.
The meeting's message is clear: the home textile fabric industry is shifting from manufacturing thinking to brand thinking, from single-product sales to overall soft furnishing solutions. Design, technology, AI, and going global are not slogans but concrete implementation paths. For Keqiao and national home textile clusters, whoever can turn data into assets, technology into products, and traffic into orders will take the lead in the new track of the 15th Five-Year Plan.