Shaoxing University Brings 200 Students to Threadify for a Hands-On Textile Study Tour

On July 7th, nearly 200 faculty and students from Shaoxing University's College of Textile Science and Engineering visited Threadify for a full day of practical, industry-based learning. The group came from two departments — Textile Materials and Engineering, and Light Chemical Engineering — and toured the platform in two batches, morning and afternoon, to see firsthand how the Keqiao textile industry actually operates.

For a fabric sourcing platform built to connect classroom knowledge with real supply chains, this kind of industry-academia visit is exactly the kind of exchange Threadify exists to support.

Chemical Engineering Students Explores Fabric Trends and Design

The Morning session, led by Minister Wei, started their tour at Threadify's fabric and accessories supermarket. Thousands of ready-made fabrics were on display, organized by category — sportswear, loungewear, and outerwear — giving students the chance to physically handle and compare textures, weights, and functional properties across fabric types.

Professor Cai used the displayed fabrics as live examples to walk through current trends shaping the sports, outdoor, and loungewear categories. She also introduced students to a shift happening across the fabric sourcing industry: selling fabric by style rather than by raw material alone, a model that better reflects how brands and designers actually shop today.

The group then moved on to Threadify's designer co-working space and central pattern-making room, where students saw how sourcing, design, and sampling come together under one roof.

Textile Engineering Students Tours the Full Threadify Fashion Complex

In the afternoon, the Textile Materials and Engineering department arrived for a more detailed walkthrough of Threadify's fabric categorization system. Professor Cai explained how the platform organizes its catalog into distinct zones — knitwear, loungewear, sportswear, and outerwear — and how this structure supports faster, more efficient B2B fabric sourcing.

Students learned that Threadify's fabric and accessories supermarket currently lists more than 18,000 products spanning knitwear, woven fabrics, yarns, and accessories, giving buyers a wide, categorized inventory to source from in one place.

The tour continued through the accessories area and the technology corridor, where a large screen displaying real-time global transaction data gave students a direct view into the international scale and operational reach of the Threadify fabric sourcing platform. The visit closed with a group tour of the designer co-working space and a group photo.

Bridging Academic Learning with Real World Experience

After the guided sessions, students and faculty were given free time to explore the fabric and accessories supermarket on their own — touching, comparing, and examining different fabric and accessory types firsthand. For many, this was the first time textile theory learned in the classroom was matched directly against real fabric samples inside an active industry setting.

Visits like this one give textile engineering students a clearer picture of how raw materials, design, and sourcing technology intersect in a working fabric marketplace — knowledge that's hard to fully grasp from lectures alone.

Looking Ahead: More Industry-Academia Collaboration

This study tour gave Shaoxing University's faculty and students a firsthand look at the diverse applications and market value of textile materials within a live industry environment. Threadify looks forward to welcoming more institutions for similar exchanges, and to continuing to explore new ways to strengthen the link between textile education and real-world fabric sourcing.