After 20 years in the fabric business in Keqiao, I want to tell you how this "city built on fabric" came to be — and make one thing clear: why fabric buyers from all over the world eventually end up in Keqiao.

A Cloth Ration Ticket That Marked an Era

In December 1983, the State Council announced the abolition of cloth ration tickets.

To young people today, the term "cloth ticket" sounds unfamiliar. But back then, buying cloth required a ration ticket — a family's clothing, bed sheets, and quilt covers all depended on those thin slips of paper. Cloth tickets circulated in China for 30 years, and their retirement was a signal that China's textile industry was about to take off.

Around those same years, a place called Keqiao in Shaoxing, Zhejiang was quietly changing. Before the textile market was even built, a spontaneous "riverside cloth street" had already formed. Locals, speaking in a thick Shaoxing dialect, laid out bolt after bolt of fabric and haggled with traders from all over the country.

On October 1, 1988, the Shaoxing Light Textile Market officially opened. Its 600 shops made it the largest indoor specialized market in Zhejiang Province at the time. No one imagined that this step would become the starting point of a shift in the world's textile landscape.

Thirty Years, from a Cloth Street to the "World's Textile Capital"

Thirty years on, China is already the world's largest producer, consumer, and exporter of textiles, with total textile industry output value growing more than 140-fold since the start of reform and opening up.

Keqiao has also grown from a small riverside market into a place with a globally recognized textile industry cluster. The industry has given it a moving name — "a city built on fabric." In scale, supporting infrastructure, and influence, it can now stand shoulder to shoulder with traditional textile powers like Italy.

As someone who has spent 20 years in this business, I watched Keqiao grow from "a place that sells fabric" into a "world textile center." Along the way, three things are especially worth telling.

The First Thing: From "Selling Fabric" to "Selling Design"

Many people still picture Keqiao as "cheap, high volume, lots of patterns." But what you may not know is that Keqiao stopped being a simple fabric wholesale market long ago.

Ten years ago, "pattern designer" was nearly nonexistent in Keqiao's textile supply chain. Don't underestimate this role — in developed Western countries, an excellent pattern designer is more than a profession; they can even become artists. Every major fashion brand has its own distinctive patterns, something carved into the brand's very identity.

That gap is now being filled quickly. Take Walan as an example: founded at the end of 2012 as a shared platform for fabric pattern design, by 2017 it had accumulated more than 500,000 patterns and built a design park in Keqiao. From trend releases and designer training to pattern trading and copyright protection, a complete chain around "design" is taking shape in Keqiao.

In 2017, Keqiao was home to 381 creative design institutions. Revenue at the textile creative base reached 1.2 billion yuan, driving 23.97 billion yuan in sales for related enterprises. Behind these numbers is a real step Keqiao has taken from "manufacturing" to "creating."

The Second Thing: From "Competing on Scale" to "Competing on Output Per Mu"

Textile dyeing and finishing was once a notoriously "high-pollution, high-energy" industry. How did Keqiao solve this problem?

As early as 2006, Keqiao was among the first in China to put forward the concept of "judging heroes by output per mu" — not measuring success by factory size, but by the efficiency and profit generated per unit of land. This idea later evolved into the "mu-equivalent assessment" and became a practice adopted across the country.

The most visible change happened in the printing and dyeing industry. Keqiao consolidated more than 200 printing and dyeing enterprises into 107, all gathered in the Binhai Industrial Zone. There, they share supporting water, gas, and electricity facilities and "three-waste" treatment infrastructure; the zone is also a national circular-economy transformation pilot park.

You may feel this is just a government-level move, far removed from your daily life. But for fabric buyers, the impact is very direct: after consolidation and upgrading, Keqiao's printing and dyeing enterprises widely adopted smart manufacturing and precision equipment, with high-end equipment penetration exceeding 60% across the district. The result? More stable colorfastness, smaller color variation, more accurate delivery times — and even lower costs.

In 2017, the output value and profit of Keqiao's printing and dyeing industry grew 20.3% and 37.1% year on year respectively. That is what "green and high-end" delivers.

The Third Thing: From "Made in Keqiao" to "Designed in Italy"

In May 2018, a project called the "China-Europe Fashion Dream Factory" was launched in Keqiao.

Simply put, Keqiao connected Italy's brand and design resources with its own manufacturing capabilities and industrial support. Not long after the project landed, more than 20 Italian companies had settled in, and a group of Italian designers crossed the ocean to start businesses in Keqiao.

Why do this? Because Keqiao knows exactly what its next step is: simply "making fabric" is no longer enough — it must also be able to "lead fashion." Italy has world-class design, and Keqiao has world-class manufacturing. Only by combining the two can the textile industry's value chain be pushed even higher.

For buyers sourcing in Keqiao, what does this mean? It means what you can buy here is no longer just "fabric," but a "design-led, trend-aware, quality-guaranteed" fabric solution.

A Final Word: Why Global Buyers All Come to Keqiao

I often tell clients from other regions — and even other countries — that you come to Keqiao not because it is cheap (although it does have a price advantage), but because it is "complete."

Today, the China Light Textile City market trades more than 40,000 types of textile products, with high-value-added products accounting for 20%, and products are exported to more than 190 countries and regions. The "China Keqiao Textile Index" and the "China Keqiao Fashion Index" have become global barometers for the textile industry and the fashion world.

In 2017, the China Light Textile City market cluster reached a transaction volume of 194.62 billion yuan, ranking first among specialized markets in China. Keqiao's textile exports reached 62.1 billion yuan, with countries along the Belt and Road accounting for more than half, making it the first county-level district in Zhejiang to surpass $10 billion in exports in a single industry.

These numbers, translated into plain words, are: people who make and sell clothes anywhere in the world cannot avoid Keqiao.

And I am one of the people doing fabric in Keqiao. Twenty years, from a market stall to a factory, and today to integrated source supply. I have seen Keqiao's cloth street, and I have witnessed it become today's world textile capital.

If you also need fabric — whether a sample for one garment or long-term supply for a brand — you are welcome to Keqiao, and welcome to reach out to me.

Author: Lao Zhao of Keqiao, 20 years in the fabric industry, from market-stall trading to owning a factory and then to integrated source supply

Scope: Women's apparel fabrics, chiffon, acetate satin, Tencel, cotton/linen, TR stretch — ready stock + custom orders

Location: Keqiao, Shaoxing, Zhejiang · China Light Textile City

Service promise: 1-meter cutting, factory-direct shipping, nationwide delivery in 3 days, custom processing and exclusive weaving supported

Industry data in this article comes from public statistics (as of 2018); historical background references public information from the China Light Textile City.