Facing the complicated situation with sluggish global economy and weak market demand, China’s textile industry has deepened the transformation and upgrading to positively practice supply-side reform and strategy to increase variety, improve quality and create brand. Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics Spring, Intertextile Shanghai Home Textile Spring, Yarn Expo Spring, CHIC- China International Fashion Fair Spring and PH Value Spring were simultaneously held in National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) during March 15 - 17, 2017.
Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics Spring
Exhibitors: nearly 3,400
Exhibition area: over 187,000 sqm
After three days of steady business, new discoveries and networking amongst the global industry, the world’s largest apparel fabrics and accessories trade fair for the spring / summer season closed its doors with another exhibitor record set. 3,341 exhibitors from 26 countries and regions in seven exhibition halls, covering 187 thousand square meters, made the most of Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabric’s global platform, a 5.9% increase on 2016 (3,155 from 27 countries and regions). The fair brought together the latest high-quality women’s fabric, suits fabric, casual fabric, sportswear fabric, shirt fabric, pattern design as well as all kinds of accessories products.
Amongst the many exhibitors reporting strong results were two world-renowned brands who were returning to the fair. Even with their long participation at Intertextile Shanghai, they still managed to meet new, quality buyers this edition. “Although we are always exhibiting here, we still see new people at the fair and can always find potential customers,” Mr Eberhard Ganns, Managing Director of German company Union Knopf (HK) Ltd explained. “Many of the companies in China are growing in size as well as quality, so they are interested in our products. Around 70% of people to our booth have been new and interested customers, so Intertextile Shanghai is the show to be at and is an absolute must! We are telling everyone if you want to be serious in this business then you have to be here.” Mr Ganns also explained that they didn’t just receive interest from Chinese buyers, of which he said their quality was “significantly increasing” in recent years, but around 20% of visitors were from overseas including Asia, Europe and the US.
Intertextile Shanghai Home Textile Spring
Exhibitors: over 200
Exhibition area: 2,700 sqm
The Intertextile Shanghai Home Textile Spring played host to over 200 exhibitors at home and abroad in the hall with area of 27 thousand square meters, which was divided into bedding brand zone, towel brand zone, finished curtain zone, equipment zone, overseas exhibition zone as well as forum area, to create a high-quality life based on bedding articles.
2017 spring home textile exhibition paid more attention to precision and comprehensiveness in terms of category. It also covered high-quality functional products and intelligent ideas to meet regular consumer demand and balance individuation and customization in terms of product. The well-known brands attended the feast with no doubt, and innovative brands devoted to the fair with cohesion. In addition to domestic brands, the exhibition also attracted many famous foreign brands to participate in, such as Lenzing Group, Cotton Council International, Powerloom Powerloom Development & Export Promotion Council (PDEXCIL) and so on.
The fair got together eight pavilions, including Haimen Pavilion, Tongzhou Pavilion, Pujiang Pavilion, Shuyang Pavilion, Zhenze Pavilion, Gaoyang Pavilion, zhouquan Pavilion and Huzhou Pavilion, to signify the strength of cluster. The responsible person of Gao Yang Pavilion put forward that exhibition in form of pavilion was not an important window to show brands and culture of enterprises, but also an effective way to demonstrate brand strength and cluster advantages.
In the exhibition, many home textile enterprises has launch personalized products with their own brand characteristics, to expand market share rate and enhance enterprises reputation and competitive advantage.
Hengyuanxiang Group launched a new wedding home textile brand - Constant happiness for a century, which combined culture and products to represent traditional wedding customs, and inherit and develop traditional marriage culture.
"In addition to the product, the service is also the focus of the brand experience. In the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony, 'making a bed’ is a very important procedure. The bed not only symbolizes healthy and harmonious marriage, but also serves as a tool for breeding descendants safely. Before the wedding, someone is responsible for making the bed, and spreading all kinds of candies, such as red date, peanut, longan and lotus seeds, which wishes them to bear their babies as soon as possible. Therefore, we launched a special service for customers to make a bed, so as to bring grand ceremony and full of happiness for the couple with care and blessing.” Qiang Jianchun, General Manager of Hengyyuanxiang Home Textile said.
Yarn Expo Spring
Exhibitors: over 390
Exhibition area: 25,000 sqm
2017 yarnexpo spring and summer occupied the entire hall 5.1 of the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) for the first time to host over 390 enterprises from 12 countries and regions with the area of more than 25 thousand square meters, rising about 67% compared with last year. Many leading enterprises have also appeared to promote popular fiber, green fiber, high-performance fiber as well as a variety of yarns with new functional difference to meet the new market demands of downstream in the process of consumption upgrade.
Duan Xiaoping, vice president of China National Textile and Apparel Council, and president of China Chemical Fibers Association, indicated that the joint textile exhibitions was a large-scale exhibition for upstream and downstream of textile industry chain. More and more chemical fiber enterprises actively participated in the fair with strong curation ability. All exhibitors had excellent strength, such as superior products, advanced technology, and product development capability for the downstream market demand.
As an international trade platform, the fair attracted many overseas pavilions every year, such as Pakistan Pavilion, India Pavilion, as well as yarn enterprises form Vietnam, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and other places. The number of overseas exhibitors were more than 90.
When it comes to the influence of China’s decreasing demand for yarn, Indian and Pakistan enterprises seemed to resonated with each other. “Of course, there is some influence to our sales and not like before”, Mazhar Ali Kaleem, manager export (fabric) of Abtex International LTD.. “In recent years, China’s demand for yarn has slowed down, and it has made an influence to our production and sales. Also cotton price in India is high, so the price of cotton yarn is also higher than Chinese yarn. Some customers couldn’t accept our price, so the business is a little difficult. However we couldn’t stop our business, and we can sale our products to other countries and regions,” principal of Jolly Spinning Mills PVT LTD, said. Balan Mudaliar, manager (exports) of Gujarat Ambuja Exports LTD., pointed out “China slowed down yarn import, so our production is going to stop. Last two year, many mills have been set up, and we have more production of yarn, like 100% cotton yarn. But looking at this market situation, we are in trouble. But somehow, the domestic market is good at moment. China’s has poor demand, and they also have some stock. We are just waiting for the right time to raise demand of cotton yarn, so we can get started to export to China”. While LNB Group, another Indian enterprises, seemed to perfect well. Dinesh Manuja, vice president of LNB Group, said “Now it’s not affecting our sales, because Indian domestic market is very good. The export of India only accounted for 25%, while the rest 75% was consumed in Indian local or domestic market.”
CHIC 2017 Spring
Exhibitors: 1213
Exhibition area: 107,200 sqm
CHIC 2017 Spring took place in the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) with an exhibition area of 107,200 square meters. A total of 1213 exhibitors from 21 countries and regions have met in CHIC including those from Korea, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Britain, Peru, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Brazil, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and so on. It was a grand meeting collecting picked brands and global industry chain resources, demonstrating the splendid chapter of innovation in clothing.
More than a thousand of exhibitors appeared in CHIC covering the most powerful and dynamic clothing brands with potential, intelligent manufacturing enterprises, industry clusters and resources providers. Their creativity, innovative products, new retail, model, technology, craft and manufacturing shined the front edge of the industry, as well as combination between technology and fashion, profiling each endeavor in comprehensive innovation from the Chinese clothing industry.
Li Peiquan, principle of Linqian (International) Clothing Co., Ltd. said, “Although the environment is not good, we still insist on offline sales model. We pay more attention to consumer experience with scenario-base decorative style, so as to guide the consumers to consume actively, rather than passively.” Bao Yu, principal of Ningbo Stars Fashion Trade Co., Ltd. said, “We focus on doing children’s wear suits. In the beginning, many people don't understand, but now more more people to accept. Especially the two-child policy greatly promotes the development of our company. At present, domestic children’s wear suit brand is less, so our vision is to make our products more sophisticated and more professional, hope more people know about us.”
CHIC has always been a stage for innovators. Their innovation centered on products, service and business models reflects the endeavor and enterprise of the Chinese clothing industry which has evolved from big to large and is developing from large to strong.
Here, you can find innovative products featured with cultural creativity: the shoes brand Carti has managed to build the first intelligent-wear series—high-heeled shoes that can change heels. It was a breakthrough in high-heeled shoes which allow a wearer to flexibly adjust the height of heels to ease pressure around feet; A designer brand Jack One surpassed conventions and display their hand-painted fashion products; Shi Jie&Janique presented their pieces with a perfect match of the Chinese ink painting and calligraphic art, showing the unique quintessence from the Oriental civilization.
In addition, CHIC2017 (Spring) continued to establish the communication and cooperative bridge between exhibitors and trade visitors and built a brandnew exhibition atmosphere for visitors via the comprehensive service system, pragmatic associated events and professional exhibition partners. CHIC2017 (Spring) launched the “one on one” precise trade-matching service as well. That is to say, buyers, enterprises, distributors who have trade and business needs can match precisely with corresponding core exhibitors. It was a way to increase efficiency for trade visitors and help them accomplish business discussion and cooperation in less time.
PH Value Spring
Exhibitors: over 120
Exhibition area: 8,500 sqm
More than 120 enterprises gathered in 2017 PH Value fair, with an area of 8,500 square meters. The exhibits covered knitwear, woolen sweater, cashmere sweater and so on, which presented a most creative and fashionable trade and exchange platform of upstream and downstream in knitting industry.
Knitted products are in line with the lifestyle of modern people, who advocate nature and health. After years of development, China’s knitting industry has been greatly improved in degree of concentration, and the development of brands and industrial clusters has been significantly improved.
In 2017 PH Value, the five knitting clusters, Puyuan, Honghe, Haiyang,Qinghe and Dalang, have exhibited with the image of regional cluster brand. Yang Jichao, vice president of China National Textile and Apparel Council, and President of China Knitting Industry Association, pointed out that under the guidance of “Variety, Brand,Quality”, we should actively cultivate excellent brand enterprises with a market segment to form a differentiated competitive advantage.
As the source of the textile and apparel industry chain, the leading role of yarn industry to the collaboration of industry chain is particularly important. Yarn is the source of the design, where innovation begins, so knitting designers must have a certain grasp of the style of yarn performance to design excellent works.
Honghe woolen knitting cluster conformed to the development trend, and organized eight enterprises to participate in the fair with the form of “Internet + entity factory”. They hoped to achieve synchronous display between online and offline, real and virtual, so as to realize the transformation and upgrading of traditional sweater industry and regional brands.
In the joint exhibition spring, China National Textile and Apparel Council devoted to creating a platform to promote trade and meet future, with professional service, meticulous planning, innovative services and precise docking. We believe that as long as the whole industry stays true to the mission, we will usher in a new dawn for the development.