When the annual output value of curtain fabrics approaches 70 billion yuan and cross-border online transactions reach 800-900 million USD, Keqiao, the 'economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth', once again becomes the industry's focus. The 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting sent a clear signal: the home textile industry is bidding farewell to scale dividends and shifting to a growth model driven by original design and AI digitalization.
Industry Landscape: Scale and Pressure Coexist
Keqiao's China Textile City recorded a turnover exceeding 440 billion yuan in 2025, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises. Behind these figures lies a complete industrial chain agglomeration effect. However, the industry is not without challenges: the real estate downturn has squeezed soft furnishing demand, rising raw material costs have eroded profits, and exports have seen volume growth with price decline. The profit pressure in the first half of the year indicates that the previous low-price, high-volume model is no longer sustainable.
Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized that this year marks the beginning of the '15th Five-Year Plan', with stable growth in production, sales, and exports, but weak demand and trade fluctuations are real challenges. The three paths he proposed—AI digital transformation, green manufacturing, and leveraging Keqiao's industrial chain for diversified markets—actually point the way for enterprises trapped in involution.
Breakthrough Paths: Design, Technology, and AI Implementation
At the meeting, multiple guests deconstructed the way forward from different dimensions. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant for Tianyu New Materials, targeted price involution and product homogeneity, proposing a return to real home scenarios, focusing on the 300 million people with sleep disorders and new demands like separate bedding, combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors. This means original design is no longer simple pattern renovation but building a product matrix from image products to traffic products to establish brand pricing power.
Donghua University Associate Professor Ji Feng's technical sharing was more practical: using 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 industrialized, these technologies will significantly reduce detection and sampling costs, especially for small and medium-sized curtain enterprises.
Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, introduced the concept of 'Spatial AI', worth attention. He emphasized that the fabric industry will not be eliminated by AI, but enterprises that deploy spatial intelligence first will reshape the competitive landscape. World models enable spatial analysis and material replacement, with commercial soft furnishing as the priority track, and warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes can be scaled. For buyers, this means AI application capability may become a key supplier screening criterion in the future.
New Export Variables: Traffic Dividends and Product Tiers
Zhang Xiaocun, partner at Modeng Media, revealed new growth poles with data: 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. He emphasized immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streaming as viral tactics, and suggested building a three-tier product matrix: basic, functional, and co-branded. This means for foreign trade enterprises, relying solely on B2B orders is being broken by DTC and content e-commerce, making traffic operation capability a new competitive barrier.
Zhu Xiaohong, President of the China Home Textile Association, listed six development goals, with 'improving global diversified supply chains' and 'deepening domestic soft furnishing renewal demand' side by side, indicating that dual circulation is an inevitable choice. 'Building Chinese home textile aesthetic independent brands' and 'implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards' point to brand premium and response to green trade barriers.
Practical Recommendations
For Buyers - Pay attention to suppliers' AI application capabilities, such as intelligent color matching and automatic detection, which can significantly shorten lead times and reduce costs. - Prioritize factories with functional fabrics (temperature control, antibacterial) and complete product matrices to meet consumption upgrade demands. - When sourcing for overseas markets, reference high-growth data from TikTok platforms in Southeast Asia and Latin America to plan ahead for potential markets.
For Foreign Trade Enterprises - Establish a three-tier product matrix (basic, functional, co-branded) to adapt to different channels and customer groups. - Utilize Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streaming and local influencer collaborations to reduce customer acquisition costs and improve conversion rates. - Pay attention to carbon footprint standards and obtain green certifications early to avoid future export obstacles.
The conclusion of the annual meeting is not the end but the starting gun for a new round of competition. With design, technology, and AI as keywords, the reshuffling of the home textile industry has begun. Whoever can transform technology into product strength first will tear open new growth gaps in the existing market.