Shanghai Daily news

A customer checks out textile products at the newly opened Shanghai International Home Textile Center at ShanghaiMart yesterday. The center aims to offer a bigger trading platform for domestic textile businesses as the world market for Chinese goods expands following the lifting of global trade quotas.(Photo: Shanghai Daily)

Shanghaimart - which claims to be China's leading textile trading platform - opened an international home textile center yesterday as the world market for Chinese goods expands following the elimination of global trade quotas this year.
The Shanghai International Home Textile Center is located on the ninth and 10th floors of ShanghaiMart, where 28,000 square meters of space is being leased out to about 300 exporters.
So far, 14 major Chinese home textile makers, including Shanghai Luolai Home Textiles Co Ltd and Jiangsu Soho Fashion Textile Co Ltd, have set up product display offices on the ninth floor.
"We plan to build the international home textile center into China's biggest such center catering to the mid- and high-end market," said Tian Hao,  ShanghaiMart general manager. "It will be the Fifth Avenue of home textile goods in two to three years when most of the country's major companies move in."
The center will invite leading domestic and overseas home textile firms seeking to exploit the Chinese market.
Meanwhile, a Spring Home Textile Festival is being held on the ninth floor of ShanghaiMart through today.
China's home textile exports accounted for about 20 percent of total textile exports, which stood at US$95 billion last year. The lifting of world quotas on textiles opened a floodgate of goods headed for overseas markets.
"As a veteran apparel exporter, we started home textile businesses this year because there are no longer any quotas," said Liu Ling, general manager of Soho Fashion Textile.
Apparel buyers and exhibitors took an wait-and-see attitude and hesitated in signing deals at the Canton trade fair this month, given threats by the United States and Europe that they might take protective actions.