Nantong Home Textile Development History

The world's home textiles look at China, and the Chinese home textiles look at Nantong.

How powerful is Nantong's home textile industry? Data speaking, as early as 2021, the annual transaction volume of Nantong home textile market exceeded 230 billion yuan, supplying more than 60% of the global market on its own.

Not only that, the annual output of Nantong home textile bedding products has exceeded 1.2 billion pieces, an average of 1,350 sets, 670 quilts and 340 pillows per minute, occupying half of the national home textile market. The daily express package volume exceeds 2.4 million pieces, with an average of 1,680 pieces sent to all parts of the country every minute. The "Nantong Home Textile Index" has become an important indicator of the industry.

Up to now, Nantong Home Textiles has formed a complete home textile industry chain covering "weaving, dyeing, printing, finished products, research and development, logistics", and every link is comprehensive. More than 10 townships have been involved in this industry, with more than 400,000 employees, forming an agglomeration effect of grassroots entrepreneurship.

From a disorderly and low-level cloth market to a leader in China's largest and world-leading home textile market, a 100 billion industry has sprung up in just a few decades, which belongs to the "gold rush" story of Nantong's home textile industry. Still going on.

01. Prospering in the "underground" market, how Nantong Home Textiles took off

"Running waves, wandering waves, thousands of miles of torrential rivers never stop..."

In 1980, "Shanghai Bund", which depicted the legend of the Shanghai gang, premiered and caused a sensation. In the same year, in Nantong, a small city across the river from Shanghai, the seeds of "restlessness" were breaking ground.

At the junction of Chuanjiang Town in Tongzhou, Nantong and Sanxing Town in Haimen District, there is a "stacked stone bridge" named because the bridge piers are stacked in the shape of stone strips. "zone. Relying on this special "cover", Dieshiqiao has become a "safe haven" for underground commodity trading.

In order to make a living, local villagers often exchange tickets in this area, and sometimes sell handicrafts such as embroidered pillowcases. Here is one more thing, Nantong's textile industry has a solid foundation, which can be traced back to 1899, when the patriotic industrial leader Zhang Jian founded the enterprise group with Dasheng Textile Company as the core.

Unexpectedly, the embroidered pillowcase was so popular. The villagers followed suit and sold pillowcases, floral thread, bed sheets and other goods one after another. At one time, the number of stalls grew to nearly 200. The reputation of "Dieshiqiao selling embroidery" spread like wildfire, and more and more people came to buy it. many.

However, paper cannot contain fire. After New Year's Day in 1981, the Haimen Industrial and Commercial Bureau organized a large number of law enforcement personnel to conduct a sudden inspection, and the operators fled in all directions. Talks, records, and punishments followed one after another.

Relying on these two simple markets, a group of unreconciled young people either joined the sales force or established family factories. Embroidery products from Nantong were sold to various cities in a steady stream, initially laying the foundation for Dieshiqiao embroidery products to spread all over the country. sales network.

In 1992, the governments of Haimen and Tongzhou respectively built the Dieshiqiao Home Textile Finished Market and the Zhihao Home Textile Fabric Market. A large number of local processing households appeared, and hundreds of home textile brands were born in Nantong.

With China's accession to WTO, "Dieshiqiao International Home Textile City" was officially put into operation and construction. From the first phase to the third phase, from 50,000 square meters to 1 million square meters, Nantong Dieshiqiao Home Textile Universe was formally formed.

Relying on the demographic dividend and the blowout demand for foreign trade, Nantong's home textile industry is making rapid progress and is unstoppable.

02. Hit hard by the financial crisis, the home textile industry is facing life and death

In those years when foreign trade was booming, a large number of manufacturers in the Dieshiqiao home textile market were engaged in OEM and export business, earning a lot of money.

Low capital investment and generous income returns have made Nantong's home textile market from saturated to crowded. Under such circumstances, foreign customers have a wide range of choices, causing companies to lower prices and compete fiercely. No one dares to raise prices alone. price. As a result, the Nantong textile industry, whose gross profit rate once reached 70%-80%, became narrower and narrower, and became a meager profit industry.

At the same time that the price cannot be raised, Nantong Home Textiles has to grit its teeth to bear the price increase of labor costs, raw material costs and other links. In the end, these all accumulate into the burden of the enterprise, laying the "fuse" for future problems.

The vicious cycle continues. Due to the low threshold of the home textile industry, designs such as patterns are the core competitiveness. In order to grab orders, chaos such as "cottage" and "piracy" emerge in endlessly.

Today, the Nantong home textile market has formed a trinity intellectual copyright protection system of "administrative punishment, civil mediation, and judicial intervention". The copyright registration and patent authorization of all categories of home textile products can be completed within 7 working days. Bring the copyright certificate to Kuaiwei The center issues a determination of infringement, and the process can be completed in less than three days, achieving a quick stop loss.

Thanks to this determination, Nantong's home textile industry has achieved a leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. Large and small factories and stores each have their own characteristics and a hundred flowers bloom. Nantong has also become one of the best areas for intellectual property protection in the country.

According to statistics, at the beginning of 2009, about 3% of the above-regulated home textile enterprises in Nantong were on the verge of bankruptcy, while among the enterprises under the regulation, 10% of them were struggling on the verge of death.

Fortunately, with the arrival of the Internet wave, Nantong's home textile industry, which has been hit hard, has once again glowed with "vitality". On one side is the world factory in the field of home textiles, on the other side is a new type of e-commerce and a huge domestic demand market. The strong combination of the supply side and the consumer side has shaken off a vigorous new consumer world.

03. Keeping pace with the times and moving to e-commerce, the "deformation meter" is still on stage

Opportunities and challenges always go hand in hand. E-commerce accelerates the product metabolism and realization cycle. Without a wealth of new products to cater to the fast-paced online consumer market, it will be impossible to gain a foothold. On average, 15 new products are born every hour—this is Nantong The current speed of innovation and research and development in the home textile market.

At the same time, in order to get rid of the original dilemma of low-cost involution and meet the consumption demands of different groups of people, home textile manufacturers have focused more energy on product development, actively jumped out of the "comfort zone" and changed their "posture" to lead the way.

Although textile is a traditional industry, it is no longer traditional today. Even a single fiber has a lot to do. The same 40-count, 60-count, and 90-count fabrics will produce different physical sensations in terms of air permeability and decolorization due to the improvement of the process.

From the street stall market selling baskets to the internationally renowned industrial park, Nantong's "four-piece suit" has not only become an indispensable necessity in people's life, but also achieved a regional advantage pillar industry - the scale of high-end home textiles ranks third in the world and the country's largest. First, rank among the world's "three major textile centers" in the international market.

For the future, Nantong Home Textiles has a grand vision - to build a world-class home textile industrial cluster with world-leading industrial scale, world-advanced manufacturing capabilities, world-renowned Nantong Home Textile regional brands, and continuous innovation capabilities.