Elsewhere an industrial belt usually grows the other way round: factories cluster first, and a market follows. Nantong reversed it. A trading spot existed before it was legal; only after that trade was recognised did the market get built, and then the industrial parks.
That order still decides how you buy here today.
How It Grew
In the 1960s and 1970s, farmers from the three towns of Sanxing, Chuangang and Jiangzao, on the border between Haimen and Tongzhou counties, began setting up stalls to sell embroidery products. The ground sat on the county line: when Haimen came to inspect, sellers ran into Tongzhou; when Tongzhou came to inspect, they ran back into Haimen. The market grew inside an administrative gap.
Early in 1978 there was a coordinated clean-up, and sewing-machine heads were taken off and locked in warehouses. After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, households went back to making home textiles.
The real turning point was December 1982, when the market was given legal status. What followed was catch-up construction: Xiupin City, the embroidery market, was completed in 1992, and the first industrial park was built in 1995 under the slogan "commerce concentrates into the market, industry concentrates into the parks".
After that: in July 2015 the State Council approved the site as a market procurement trade pilot (one of only three nationwide); in 2020 the Jiangsu Nantong International Home Textiles Industrial Park was set up; and in 2026 Phase IV came into operation.
Read that sequence and you have Nantong's underlying character: an industry pulled into existence by trading demand, not one expanded out of production lines.
The Scale Today
In 2025 Nantong had 419 home textile companies above designated size, with output value of RMB 30.42 billion; annual bedding output exceeded 1.2 billion pieces; annual market transaction value topped RMB 240 billion; the city held more than half of the domestic bedding market; and products went to more than 130 countries. The city counts over 80,000 home textile market entities — among them more than 4,000 finished-product manufacturers, more than 2,400 fabrics and trims suppliers, more than 200 design studios, over 50,000 e-commerce businesses, and more than 400,000 people employed in the sector.
Look at the shape of that 80,000: sellers (50,000 e-commerce businesses) outnumber makers (4,000) by an order of magnitude. That is what a market-led industry looks like — a very large trading floor first, and a mass of factories second.
What This Structure Means for Buyers
In one sentence: fast on pattern changes and on assembling a full kit, but the price is not necessarily the lowest.
The official description of the chain is "R&D and design, spinning and weaving, printing and dyeing, finished-product sewing, sales and logistics". In practice, the fabric, trims, embroidery, packaging and testing a bedding product needs can all be handled inside the park — so changing a pattern, switching a fabric or topping up a batch of trims does not mean waiting for goods to be shipped in from another province.
That is also the biggest difference from a single-factory industrial belt: what you look for here is not "one factory that can do the whole job", but "a circle that can assemble every material in a day".
The trade-off is too many participants and too low a barrier: dozens of sellers may carry the same design, and quotes run from low to absurdly low.
Three Things to Watch (The Cases Here Are Real)
In September 2025, CCTV's "Financial Investigation" programme exposed problems with bedding from here, and the Nantong Municipal Administration for Market Regulation then reported: nine companies involved, 67 batches sampled, 7,389 sets (pieces) sealed. What was established:
- Thread count misstated: 60 thread count on the label, 40 actual;
- Synthetic fibre passed off as 100% cotton: labelled "100% cotton, brushed", tested at over 30% synthetic;
- Class A labels applied in-house: the safety category on the label did not match the product;
- Forged test reports: the reports themselves were counterfeit.
So in a market like this, do not read the label; ask for the report, and check its authenticity on the website of the lab that issued it. The National Bedding Quality Inspection and Testing Centre (Jiangsu) is based locally, and the Nantong Inspection, Testing and Certification Industrial Park opened in March 2026, bringing in SGS, Bureau Veritas and LRQA — being able to test locally is the real advantage here.
Getting There
Dieshiqiao is in Sanxing Town, Haimen District, not in central Nantong. About two hours by motorway from Shanghai Hongqiao or Pudong; about an hour after landing at Nantong Xingdong Airport; or take the high-speed train to Nantong Station or Haimen Station and then a taxi. The goods sit in one place, and the main stalls can be covered in a day.
One Test
Nantong's value is speed at assembling and adapting, not the lowest quote.
If what you want is a standard bedding product, in volume, with the price squeezed to the limit, a factory-type origin is the better deal. If you want to change patterns, source trims and try a few designs in small batches, the density here has no equivalent elsewhere.
Work out which of the two you need before you decide whether to come.