Author | Liu Jingfeng

Textiles are one of the manufacturing industries closest to people's lives. Among the four basic needs of “clothing, food, housing, and travel”, clothing and housing are inseparable from textiles.

World textiles look at China, Chinese textiles look at Shaoxing. Although Keqiao, Shaoxing is only a district at the administrative level, it has the largest textile industry cluster in the country and the world's largest distribution center for textile products, China Textile City. Every year, 1/4 of the world's fabrics are traded here, especially curtains. These textiles are distributed to 206 countries and regions around the world.

Since ancient times, this major silk town has always been the “world of clothing and clothing.” In the past, foreign trade and economic exports have always been the main focus. According to data released by the Shaoxing Keqiao District Bureau of Statistics, Keqiao's foreign trade exports in 2024 exceeded 162.5 billion yuan, accounting for 72% of GDP.

Entering 2025, however, global trade began to destabilize. According to data released by the General Administration of Customs, textile and garment exports totaled 42.88 billion US dollars in January-February of this year, down 4.5% from the previous year. Among them, textile exports were 21.22 billion US dollars, a decrease of 2%, and clothing exports were 21.66 billion US dollars, a decrease of 6.9%, reflecting the current plight of foreign trade. Changes in the overall textile and garment trade have also caused fluctuations in Keqiao's textile exports. According to data released by the Keqiao District Bureau of Statistics, the total export volume of Keqiao District from January to February 2025 was 22.856 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 4.5%. At the same time, the good news is that e-commerce is on the rise and is beginning to take over the baton of Keqiao Textile's growth. Among these, Amazon is becoming an important driving force for Keqiao Textile to go overseas and achieve the transformation from TOB to TOC.

It's a big enough market. From a global perspective, the global curtain market will reach 44 billion US dollars (RMB 316 billion) in 2025, double the size of Keqiao's foreign trade exports in 2024. The shift in the way to go overseas from TOB to TOC means that Keqiao textile trade will be re-created in a larger volume.

In Keqiao, Shaoxing, the people most sensitive to changes in the industry are probably taxi drivers.

“In the past, foreign trade was very well developed here. A few years ago, I often attracted a lot of foreigners. They all come here to do foreign trade business. ” A local taxi driver opened the conversation when he learned that we were going to visit a foreign trade company.

Old Keqiao people are very impressed with foreign trade. This is because this place known as the “International Textile Capital” has long been more than 70% dependent on foreign trade, and foreign trade has supported most of the growth of the Keqiao textile market.

As a result, until 2020, there were nearly 100,000 foreign investors entering and leaving Keqiao every year, and there were also more than 4,000 foreigners residing in Keqiao. It is the second largest concentration county (district, city) for foreigners in Zhejiang Province.

“However, in the past two years, I feel that fewer people have come here to do foreign trade; instead, more and more young people are choosing to stay in Keqiao. ” The driver's master said. According to data released by the Keqiao District Government in 2024, about 40,000 newly employed college graduates settle in Keqiao every year.

The flow of people is often the most intuitive microcosm of industrial transformation.

Zhao Junhui, president of the China Textile City Curtain Fabric Association, told Xia Guang News Agency that judging from the general trend, this is indeed in line with the current changes in the Keqiao textile industry — traditional foreign trade is under pressure, while cross-border e-commerce is rising at an accelerated pace.

Shaoxing Yagu Home Furnishing Co., Ltd. is an internet enterprise focusing on e-commerce sales of blankets and household goods. Qian Yifan, head of Yagu Home Furnishing, said that before that, they were mainly in the foreign trade business. After 2020, the number of foreign trade orders began to shrink. “I usually talk to friends around me who work in foreign trade. Many times, foreign customers will suddenly stop the goods and not even allow them to be shipped when they are pulled to the port. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

As for the reason for the customer's “return”, Qian Yifan claimed that they were all minor problems, such as sometimes picking a problem with the product, and sometimes saying that delivery was not timely. Because the factory will face batch delivery, sometimes the goods will not arrive at the port in time if the containers are ordered late. “These are all minor issues. In the past, no one really cared about it, but now the business isn't easy to do, and customers are starting to cut out the details, which are very detailed. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

In June 2024, Qian Yifan made up his mind to transform and founded Shaoxing Yagu Home Furnishing. The products began to be sold in September, and it took another month to test. Qian Yifan, who had a test attitude, discovered that after the launch, the sales volume of the product in the Amazon store exceeded expectations. Thanks to the big promotion campaign, sales volume exceeded 800 units in the first month of operation. Since then, the average daily sales volume has stabilized at 2,300 units every month.

As the number of store orders stabilized, Amazon also became a breakthrough for Yagu Home Furnishing to break through traditional foreign trade and open up overseas C-end markets.

Unlike Yagu Home Furnishing, Shaoxing Yintong is a company that deals in curtains and upholstery. Prior to that, Yintong mainly did domestic e-commerce, and has become a leading seller on domestic e-commerce platforms.

However, in the past two years, with domestic e-commerce gradually entering the stock market, it has become more and more difficult to grow. How do I find new increments?Feng Ge, the head of Yintong, is targeting cross-border e-commerce. “We have been doing e-commerce in China for many years, and our experience in e-commerce operations is very rich. Can this experience be reused in overseas markets?Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

At the same time, another incident gave Feng Ge the courage to go out. Beginning in 2018, Yintong realized that to do a good job in front-end e-commerce, operating methods alone are not enough; it is necessary to rely on flexible back-end supply chain cooperation. Therefore, in the past few years, the factory has invested 20 million yuan to upgrade and digitally transform production equipment. The biggest change brought about by these investments has improved the stability of production quality. “Our current product sales rate has dropped to almost 30% of the industry. Because overseas customers have high requirements for product quality, this system will be of great help when we go to overseas markets. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

In November 2024, Yintong entered Amazon's US website just before the “Black Five” promotion. As a result, it had good sales in that month, with average daily sales reaching thousands of dollars, and achieved sales of 60,000 US dollars in the first two months. Since then, even after the big promotion point, Yintong's sales growth rate was over 100% month-on-month. “In the six months since it went live, our Amazon US site sales have reached 200,000 US dollars. ” Brother Feng said.

Following foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce has become Keqiao Textile's new growth baton. During a visit to Xia Guang News Agency, I discovered that some factories and enterprises that used to do foreign trade are now actively planning cross-border e-commerce. For example, Shaoxing Yunai Textile Co., Ltd., which specializes in sofa covers and sheets, also chose to enter Amazon this year to seek long-term business development.

Keqiao Enterprise did not start entering Amazon until this year.

In fact, as early as 2020, textile companies in Keqiao had already entered Amazon in batches to set up cross-border e-commerce. In the past, due to low competition, companies could do cross-border e-commerce by selling goods. However, today, market competition is becoming more and more intense, and at a time when global trade is unstable, the threshold for enterprises to go overseas is getting higher and higher. Even so, textile companies in Keqiao will prioritize Amazon when transforming to cross-border e-commerce.

Qian Yifan, the head of Yagu Home Furnishing, has gone from doing TOB foreign trade business in the past to now doing cross-border e-commerce on Amazon. My biggest feeling is that “every process here is perfect. ” In the past, when doing foreign trade business, I was most afraid of errors with products and orders, but on Amazon, the system doesn't have errors like humans.

Although Yin Tong's brother Feng is already an e-commerce veteran, in his eyes, doing cross-border e-commerce also requires re-learning a lot of knowledge. Choosing the right platform first is a big hurdle. If you don't choose the right platform, it's hard to grow. “For me, the most important thing is the localization of the platform. For example, if I want to be in the US market, then I must choose a cross-border channel that is most familiar with the local US market. Also, we don't do it with the idea of trial and error, so it's very important to look at the stability of the channel; otherwise, it's easy to fall short. ” Brother Feng said.

If you choose the right channel, going out to sea is half the success. The other half is to seize the right category opportunities.
“Our success comes from a picture. ” Brother Feng said.

When he first joined Amazon and participated in a training event organized by it, Brother Feng saw a promotional picture of a curtain. The picture showed an orange cat hooking up the curtain with its front foot.

Brother Feng, who is keen, suddenly realized that most overseas families have a habit of keeping pets, and pets can easily break the curtains. Can you come up with an anti-snag curtain?

“Then, they gave me some guiding opinions, such as how many pet people in the US are and what kind of portraits. Then we came back to think and improve the product, and finally developed a curtain that prevents pets from getting caught, and all of a sudden it sold well overseas. ” Brother Feng said.

To put it bluntly, this is still related to localization. The more localized the channel, the deeper the insight it gives to consumers, and the more it can develop products that meet the needs of the market.

With a good start, Feng Ge also attached great importance to back-office data feedback. Bad reviews, which are generally not taken seriously at home, have become a major magic weapon for Yintong to create differentiated explosives.

“At one point, we saw from a backstage review that an American consumer reported that they really needed thick curtains. In the past, we used to make curtains thinner because of logistics issues. However, we later discovered that the middle and high-end curtains from overseas generally have a very high weight and are quite thick. ” As a result, Feng Ge gradually improved and iterated the products sold abroad according to this feedback.

In addition to thickening fabrics, Yintong has also launched mildewproof and stain-resistant curtains for consumers in humid regions of the United States; developing a sunscreen series with high UV protection for consumers in areas with strong lighting... With the rapid iteration capabilities of the supply chain accumulated in the past, Yintong is gradually breaking the single status quo of the US market category and developing more cost-effective curtain solutions.

“In the past, when doing cross-border e-commerce, many people thought it was enough just to shop and sell goods. But now, you really need to better understand the needs of overseas markets and develop products that meet market needs more quickly through the supply chain. This is actually more demanding. Everything is data-driven, so it is also forcing enterprises and factories to upgrade their supply chains and enhance their digital capabilities. ” Brother Feng said.

It is also the use of Amazon's data insight and tool ecosystem to shift audio from passive response to active prediction, turning negative reviews into grippers that drive product iterations.

As Zhao Jun, president of the China Textile City Curtain Fabric Association, mentioned during an exchange with Xia Guangshe, no matter how the internal and external environment changes, “as long as we maintain strong supply chain capabilities and follow the right path, Keqiao's textile industry will continue to develop. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

At present, digitalization has become a basic capability for the development of Keqiao textile enterprises.

“Around 2020, the first intelligent production line began to appear in Keqiao. Since then, more and more companies have begun to combine this intelligent software with production. By 2024, we see that companies have already changed a lot in terms of production. ” Zhao Jun would say.

While visiting the factory, I also saw that in the past, Yuna's factory relied on a large number of manpower to do textiles, but now the huge factory looks like it's all machinery, with scattered workers interspersed in the machine room to manage production progress. “Now, there are more than 80 textile machines here. One worker manages 6-8 machines and produces 30,000 to 40,000 meters of cloth every day. ” Mr. Zhan, head of Yuna's enterprise, said.

Under the digital small-order quick return model, the factory's feedback on the front-end market is very agile. “Our quick return cycle for small orders is about 3 days. We get the design drawing on the first day, print it the next day, and mass produce and ship it on the third day. ” Zhan said in general.

Based on this flexible and variable supply chain capability, companies can seize the opportunity by rapidly testing overseas markets.

If you open Amazon's list of the top ten curtains in the world, you'll find that Keqiao companies already account for more than half.

However, what cross-border e-commerce brings to Keqiao enterprises is not only an increase in sales volume and profit growth, but more importantly, it drives improved management capabilities and brand building.

For example, Feng Ge observed that overseas customers place special importance on product standardization, and even overseas consumers use a ruler to measure the size of curtains, which forces companies to standardize in terms of production. “In overseas markets, the normal after-sales rate of curtains is mostly 13% to 15%, and after standardization is achieved, the after-sales rate will drop by half. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

The reduction in the after-sales rate has not only brought a real cost reduction to the enterprise, but also brought about a brand effect. As a result, branding has become a change that Keqiao enterprises have begun to exert strength in recent years. “Everyone wants to be a brand; they didn't have a chance before. Now we're starting to do this by slowly creating some hot products. ” Feng Ge said.

Looking at the global curtain market segment, even in North America, there are few brands that are particularly popular on the consumer side, and there are only some brands that are relatively recognized in the industry. This provides Keqiao textile products with an opportunity to go overseas.

According to the data, the global curtain market will reach 44 billion US dollars (RMB 316 billion) in 2025, which is double the size of Keqiao's foreign trade exports in 2024. If it can eat up this market, it means Keqiao can rebuild a textile industry that is twice as large as it is now. Moreover, what is different from the past is that this new textile industry mainly focuses on branding.

According to data released by the Shaoxing Municipal Government, in 2024, Keqiao District has cultivated more than 2,000 cross-border e-commerce application enterprises, cultivating 16 enterprises with an annual transaction volume exceeding 10 million US dollars, and has received a total of 7 well-known provincial cross-border e-commerce export brands. Moreover, the surrounding facilities surrounding Keqiao Textile branding, including industrial creative design, corporate design services, and patent services, are gradually being improved.

For example, as early as 2018, Shaoxing established the Keqiao District Intellectual Property Protection Center. This is the first rapid intellectual property protection agency for the entire textile industry in the country, providing a one-stop service for verifying, licensing, and protecting intellectual property rights such as pattern patterns and design patents.

“I think the future of cross-border e-commerce will change the pattern of commercial trade in China. ” Zhao Jun will say.

Perhaps the biggest highlight brought about by this is turning the globalization of Chinese manufacturing into the globalization of Chinese brands.