The home textile fabric industry's internal volume competition was vividly illustrated at the Keqiao annual meeting with striking figures: nearly 8,000 local curtain fabric enterprises, an annual output value of nearly 70 billion yuan, and cross-border online transactions of 800-900 million USD. Despite this scale, the industry faces triple pressures from real estate downturn, rising raw material costs, and export volume growth with price decline. The 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting sent a clear signal: the era of scale-based success is passing, and design, technology, and globalization are the tickets to the next phase.
Event Background
The meeting opened in mid-August in Shaoxing Keqiao, themed "Design Breakthrough, Innovation Empowerment, Global Symbiosis - New Quality Growth for Fabric Soft Furnishings." Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, noted that the textile industry saw stable growth in production, sales, and exports in the first half of the year, but pressures from weak demand and trade fluctuations persist. He emphasized that home textiles, being close to people's livelihoods, have huge potential, and the industry should focus on technology, fashion, green, and health directions, using AI digital transformation to activate new quality productivity, deepen green manufacturing, and leverage Keqiao's industrial chain for domestic and international markets.
Keqiao district leader Sun Weigang described the area as an "economic powerhouse supported by a piece of cloth." In 2025, the China Textile City's transaction volume surpassed 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises generating nearly 70 billion yuan in annual output and cross-border online transactions of 800-900 million USD. Keqiao is advancing its "International Textile Capital" initiative, using UFI-certified professional exhibitions and the "Silk Road Keqiao, Cloth All Over the World" program to expand overseas markets. The choice of Keqiao as the venue itself signals a push for industrial cluster collaboration.
Industrial Impact
Zhu Xiaohong, President of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan, noting stable industrial scale, improved innovation and standard systems, and accelerated original design and brand building. However, the fabric industry has been hit by real estate downturn and rising raw material costs, with corporate profits under pressure in the first half and exports showing volume growth with price decline. This means the low-price, high-volume foreign trade model is no longer sustainable, and companies need to find breakthroughs in product added value. Aligned with the national 15th Five-Year Plan, she proposed six major goals: improving global diversified supply chains, tapping domestic soft furnishing renewal demand, activating new quality productivity through AI and industry-academia collaboration, building a self-owned Chinese home textile aesthetics brand, implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards, and establishing healthy sleep laboratories.
Addressing price wars and homogeneity, Lin Shaowu, brand consultant at Tianyu New Materials, advocated returning to users' real home scenarios, focusing on 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate sleeping, 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 products, and using unified design language to create brand recognition and pricing power. Donghua University Associate Professor Ji Feng offered technical solutions: AI-based intelligent color matching to solve digital printing color differences, CNN deep learning for non-destructive fabric composition identification to replace chemical testing, and accelerated industrialization of phase-change temperature control and nano-modified functional fabrics. These technologies mean curtain companies can shift from "selling cloth" to "selling solutions," avoiding low-price competition through functionality and differentiation.
AI and going global were two hot topics. 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 scene generation, with commercial soft furnishing as the priority landing track. He emphasized that fabric physical data is a long-term core asset, and companies that first adopt spatial intelligence will reshape the competitive landscape. Zhang Xiaocun of Modern Media used TikTok data to show overseas opportunities: 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. He shared tactics such as immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt origin livestreams, and advised cross-border stores to build a three-tier product matrix of basic, functional, and co-branded products.