43% of global supply chains changed sourcing locations in 2025, according to QIMA’s 2026 Global Sourcing Survey of more than 1,000 internationally sourcing businesses. At the same time, global fiber production reached a record 132 million tonnes, while U.S. fashion companies reported sourcing apparel from 46 countries. Supplier discovery is changing too: 94% of B2B buyers now use large language models during the buying process, yet buyers continue to verify potential vendors through websites, Google, sales representatives and other sources.

This report brings together the latest available textile sourcing, global procurement and B2B search data to show how buyers find, compare and verify suppliers in 2026. The focus is not simply on AI adoption, but on what the evidence means for international fabric supplier selection.

Methodology: No authoritative study currently measures the AI and search behavior of global fabric buyers as a standalone population. This report therefore separates three evidence groups: textile and apparel statistics for industry conditions, global procurement research for sourcing behavior, and broader B2B studies for search and AI-assisted vendor discovery. B2B statistics are labeled as such and are not presented as fabric-buyer-specific findings. The research framework follows the supplied editorial brief.

Key Takeaways

• 43% of internationally sourcing businesses changed sourcing locations in 2025, according to QIMA’s 2026 survey of more than 1,000 businesses.
• 79% expect costs to remain a major supply-chain disruption in 2026, covering pressures including materials, shipping and labor.
• Only 18% report full end-to-end visibility across their supplier networks, despite the average company mapping 60% of its network.
• Global fiber production reached 132 million tonnes in 2024, up from 125 million tonnes in 2023.
• Polyester represented 59% of global fiber production in 2024, making it the world’s most widely produced fiber.
• U.S. fashion companies sourced apparel from 46 countries in 2025, illustrating the geographic breadth of modern sourcing.
• Southeast Asian inspection and audit demand rose 24% year over year in 2025, led by Vietnam at 30% and Thailand at 44%.
• 94% of B2B buyers used LLMs during their buying process, according to 6sense’s global 2025 buyer study.
• 71% of AI-using U.S. B2B professionals visit a vendor website after AI mentions the vendor, while 63% subsequently search for the company on Google.
• 95% of winning B2B vendors were already on the buyer’s Day One shortlist, showing how much supplier selection happens before direct contact.

1. Global Fabric and Fiber Supply Continues to Grow

The textile market is expanding in physical volume even as sourcing becomes more geographically complex. For fabric buyers, that means more material availability, more supplier options and a larger amount of information to evaluate.

Global fiber production reached a record 132 million tonnes in 2024. Textile Exchange reports that production increased from approximately 125 million tonnes in 2023 and has more than doubled since 2000.

Polyester remains central to global fabric sourcing

Polyester accounted for 59% of global fiber production in 2024, and approximately 88% of that polyester remained fossil-based. Polyester production itself increased from about 71 million tonnes in 2023 to 78 million tonnes in 2024.

That matters for the fleece and plush sectors because many widely traded products—including flannel fleece, polar fleece, Sherpa fleece, coral fleece and a large share of faux-fur fabrics—use polyester as their primary fiber.

For buyers researching these categories, the supplier-search process typically moves from a broad query such as fabric supplier toward more technically specific requirements involving composition, GSM, width, finishing, MOQ and application.

For example, buyers comparing fleece materials can move from general supplier research into specific categories such as Sherpa fleece fabric or faux fur fabric once the initial supplier pool has been narrowed.

Historical comparison

Based on Textile Exchange’s reported values, global fiber production increased from 125 million tonnes in 2023 to 132 million tonnes in 2024.

Calculated statistic:
(132 − 125) ÷ 125 × 100 ≈ 5.6% year-over-year growth

The 5.6% figure is calculated from the source data; Textile Exchange reports the underlying production values rather than this specific percentage.

Primary source: Textile Exchange, Materials Market Report 2025.

2. Fabric and Apparel Buyers Are Diversifying Where They Source

One of the clearest procurement trends entering 2026 is supplier diversification. Buyers are not simply replacing China with one alternative manufacturing country. They are spreading purchasing activity across multiple regions.

43% of companies with international sourcing networks shifted sourcing locations during 2025, according to QIMA’s 2026 Global Sourcing Survey of more than 1,000 businesses across major regions and industries.

Southeast Asia continues to gain sourcing activity

QIMA recorded 24% year-over-year growth in inspection and audit demand across Southeast Asia during 2025.

Vietnam increased 30%, Thailand 44%, Indonesia 13%, Cambodia 16% and the Philippines 13%. Demand from Latin and South American buyers for Southeast Asian inspections and audits increased by 61% year over year.

The trend continued into 2026. QIMA reported that in Q1 2026, demand from U.S. buyers across South and Southeast Asia rose 21% year over year, including Vietnam at +61%, Cambodia at +26% and India at +33%.

These numbers measure QIMA inspection and audit activity—not total national textile exports—but they provide a useful real-time indicator of changing supplier activity.

Mediterranean sourcing is also expanding

Supplier diversification is not limited to Asia.

For European buyers, QIMA recorded 25% year-over-year growth in Mediterranean sourcing activity during 2025. Egypt increased 52%, Morocco 38% and Tunisia 18%. Nearshoring and reshoring reached a record 14% of EU sourcing activity in QIMA’s dataset.

This pattern is particularly relevant to textile procurement because Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey all have established textile and apparel manufacturing bases.

The result is a more complex supplier-discovery environment. A buyer may no longer ask only:

“Who is the best fabric supplier in China?”

The sourcing question may instead become:

• Which suppliers have production in more than one country?
• Can the same material be sourced from China and another manufacturing base?
• Which country offers the best combination of cost, tariffs and lead time?
• Can a supplier maintain consistent specifications across different factories?

For manufacturers with multiple production bases, this makes factory-location information commercially useful content rather than simply corporate background.

Primary sources: QIMA 2026 Global Sourcing Survey and Q1 2026 Supply Chain Barometer.

3. Buyers Are Managing Cost, Tariff and Supply-Chain Risk at the Same Time

Supplier selection is increasingly influenced by more than unit price. Recent procurement research shows buyers balancing cost pressure with tariffs, compliance, quality, visibility and supply continuity.

79% of businesses in QIMA’s 2026 survey expect costs to remain a major supply-chain disruption during 2026.

Diversification is becoming risk management

QIMA reports that tariff-affected companies were approximately twice as likely to diversify their sourcing. Among companies affected by tariffs, 39% increased buying volumes, compared with 24% among other companies.

USFIA’s 2025 Fashion Industry Benchmarking Study provides a textile-specific perspective. Participating U.S. fashion companies sourced apparel from 46 countries, and 60% said they planned to source from more countries outside China. Only 17% planned to increase sourcing of U.S.-made textiles and apparel in response to higher tariffs.

The two studies use different populations and methodologies, so the percentages should not be combined. They nevertheless point toward the same broad pattern: diversification is being used more often than complete localization.

Supplier visibility remains incomplete

QIMA’s 2026 survey found that the average company maps approximately 60% of its supplier network, up from 53%, but only 18% has complete end-to-end visibility.

For fabric sourcing, this creates greater value for supplier information that can be verified early:

• manufacturing location;
• product specialization;
• production capacity;
• composition;
• GSM;
• usable width;
• MOQ;
• color customization;
• testing and certification;
• quality-control procedures;
• lead time;
• sampling;
• export markets.

These are recommended supplier-evaluation fields, not statistics from QIMA.

A product page that clearly answers those questions is more useful than a page built only around phrases such as “high quality,” “competitive price” or “professional manufacturer.”

For buyers already evaluating material specifications, a structured fabric product directory can therefore function as part of supplier verification rather than only as a product catalogue.

4. Supplier Discovery Is Moving Further Online

The international sourcing process may ultimately involve samples, factory audits, quotations and physical production, but the first stages of supplier evaluation increasingly happen before direct contact.

6sense’s 2025 global B2B buyer research found that buyers evaluated an average of 5.1 vendors and already had 3.6 vendors on their shortlist on Day One of the buying journey.

95% of the eventual winning vendors were already present on that Day One shortlist.

The population here is general B2B rather than textile procurement, so these figures should not be presented as direct measurements of fabric buyers.

They are still relevant to supplier marketing because they show how mature business buyers behave before contacting vendors.

The shortlist forms early

6sense found that buyers had prior experience with an average of 3.8 of the 5.1 vendors they evaluated. Buyers also reported being able to rank their shortlist before interacting with sellers in 94% of purchases.

The eventual winner came from the original Day One shortlist 95% of the time, while the preferred vendor at the end of the selection phase ultimately won 77% of purchases.

This makes early supplier discoverability valuable.

For a fabric manufacturer, the practical objective is not simply getting an inquiry. It is entering the group of suppliers a buyer considers credible enough to investigate further.

That can happen through:

• Google Search;
• AI answers;
• sourcing platforms;
• industry directories;
• referrals;
• trade publications;
• exhibitions;
• previous supplier experience;
• the supplier’s own website.

The channel list above is an analytical framework rather than a finding from one survey.

5. AI Is Becoming Part of Supplier Research

AI-assisted search is now large enough that it should be treated as part of B2B supplier discovery rather than as an experimental channel.

6sense found that 94% of B2B buyers in its 2025 global study used LLMs somewhere in the buying process. Buyers mainly used them to compare offerings, process information and summarize research rather than turning complete purchasing control over to an AI system.

Semrush’s 2026 survey provides a more detailed view of AI-assisted vendor research. The company surveyed 643 U.S. B2B professionals in March and April 2026, retained 622 valid respondents after quality checks and based its detailed AI findings on the 519 respondents who said they use AI for work.

66% of those AI users regularly use AI to research products, vendors or solutions for work, while another 29% do so occasionally.

Which AI tools are being used for vendor research?

Among Semrush’s AI-using U.S. B2B respondents:

• 71% used ChatGPT for product research;
• 61% used Gemini;
• 45% used Microsoft Copilot;
• 24% used Meta AI;
• 18% used Perplexity;
• 14% used Claude.

These figures describe one U.S. B2B sample, not worldwide fabric buyers.

The useful finding is therefore not that “71% of fabric buyers use ChatGPT.” The source does not establish that.

The supported conclusion is that AI tools have become an established vendor-research channel among B2B professionals, including respondents working in manufacturing, retail and procurement roles.

AI search favors more detailed questions

Google reports that AI Mode queries are nearly three times longer than traditional searches. AI Mode is designed to handle complex, multi-part questions and can break a query into subtopics to search the web more deeply.

That changes the type of content suppliers need to answer.

A traditional query might be:

fabric supplier

A more complex sourcing query could be:

“Which manufacturers supply 280–320 GSM polyester Sherpa fleece for winter blankets, support custom colors, and can ship from more than one production country?”

That example is illustrative, not an actual Google search statistic.

For suppliers, the difference matters. Ranking for a broad keyword is useful, but detailed pages explaining specifications, applications, manufacturing options and purchasing terms are more likely to answer the longer questions that AI search enables.

6. AI Does Not Replace Google, Supplier Websites or Human Verification

The clearest 2026 finding is not that AI has replaced traditional supplier research.

It is that buyers move between channels.

When an AI system mentions a vendor, 71% of Semrush’s AI-using B2B respondents visit the vendor website and 63% search for that company on Google.

The sequence varies.

Semrush found that:

• 41% start with AI and then validate through search;
• 35% start with search and use AI for synthesis or comparison;
• 20% move repeatedly between AI and search.

This is why SEO and AI visibility should not be treated as competing strategies.

AI can introduce a supplier.
Google can verify the brand.
The supplier website can prove capability.
Direct communication can validate commercial and technical details.

Buyers still want human verification

Gartner surveyed 645 B2B buyers in August and September 2025 and reported the results in May 2026.

69% said they prefer to validate AI-generated insights with a sales representative. Buyers used an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase, while 45% said they had used generative AI.

Gartner also found:

• 67% preferred a sales-rep-free experience;
• 70% preferred a completely digital self-service experience;
• 51% believed misleading information was more likely to come from GenAI;
• 49% believed misleading information was more likely to come from a sales representative.

Those results may appear contradictory, but they describe different stages of the same process.

Buyers want to research independently, yet many still want a human to validate information when the decision becomes important.

6sense provides similar evidence: despite 94% LLM adoption, buyers still averaged 16 interactions per person with the winning vendor.

AI is reducing research friction. It has not removed supplier due diligence.

7. Google Search Itself Is Becoming an AI Search Platform

The distinction between “SEO traffic” and “AI traffic” is becoming less clear because AI is now built directly into mainstream search.

As of June 2026, Google reported:

AI Overviews had more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, and AI Mode had surpassed one billion monthly active users.

Google also reported that AI Mode queries had more than doubled every quarter since launch, while overall Search queries reached an all-time high.

This is particularly relevant to international sourcing because Google’s AI Mode had expanded to more than 200 countries and territories by October 2025.

For a global fabric supplier, this means an informational page can potentially serve several discovery systems at once:

1. traditional Google results;
2. Google AI Overviews;
3. Google AI Mode;
4. standalone AI assistants;
5. buyers conducting manual supplier verification.

The content requirement is therefore shifting from simply “include the keyword fabric supplier” toward “provide enough clear evidence for the supplier to be understood and compared.”

2026 Fabric Sourcing by the Numbers

The following 20 statistics are the strongest citation-ready findings in this dataset.

What Fabric Buyers Typically Need to Verify After Finding a Supplier

The statistics in this report explain how supplier discovery is changing, but discovery and qualification are different tasks.

Once a fabric supplier enters consideration, the buyer still needs enough information to determine whether the manufacturer can meet the actual order.

Typical verification questions include:

For fleece buyers, those questions can then be answered at product level through detailed pages for materials such as flannel fleece, Sherpa fleece and faux fur fabric.

This is where supplier websites become especially important: AI and search may generate the shortlist, but technical content helps buyers determine whether a supplier deserves an inquiry or sample request.

What the Data Means for Fabric Supplier Discovery in 2026

Three patterns stand out.

First, sourcing is becoming more geographically distributed. Forty-three percent of internationally sourcing businesses changed sourcing locations in 2025, while both Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean recorded strong increases in QIMA sourcing activity.

Second, supplier research is becoming more self-directed. Buyers can build and rank much of a shortlist before speaking with suppliers, and 95% of winning B2B vendors in 6sense’s study were already present on the Day One shortlist.

Third, AI is being added to the research process rather than replacing existing channels. Buyers move between AI systems, Google, vendor websites and human conversations when comparing suppliers.

For a fabric supplier, this changes what “being searchable” means.

A supplier still benefits from ranking for terms such as fabric supplier, fleece fabric supplier, faux fur manufacturer or Sherpa fleece supplier. But visibility increasingly also depends on whether the website contains clear information that allows a search engine, an AI system or a purchasing professional to answer more detailed questions.

That includes product specifications, applications, production locations, customization options, MOQ, sampling, quality control and manufacturing capability.

The objective is no longer simply to appear in search.

It is to provide enough verifiable information to remain on the buyer’s shortlist after being discovered.

Citation Magnets

These five findings are particularly suitable for journalists, sourcing publications and industry writers to reference.

1. 43% of global supply chains changed sourcing locations in 2025. QIMA’s 2026 Global Sourcing Survey covers more than 1,000 businesses with international sourcing networks.

2. Global fiber production reached a record 132 million tonnes in 2024 and could reach 169 million tonnes by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario.

3. Southeast Asian sourcing inspection and audit demand grew 24% in 2025, while Mediterranean sourcing grew 25%. The data shows that diversification is developing across multiple regions rather than around a single replacement sourcing hub.

4. 95% of winning B2B vendors were already on the buyer’s Day One shortlist. This makes supplier visibility before direct contact particularly important.

5. After AI recommends a vendor, 71% of surveyed AI-using B2B professionals visit the company website and 63% search for the company on Google. AI discovery therefore often leads to additional supplier verification rather than an immediate purchasing decision.

Sources

• QIMA — 2026 Global Sourcing Survey. More than 1,000 businesses with international sourcing networks across major industries and regions; combines 2025 outcomes with 2026 expectations.
• QIMA — Q1 2026 Supply Chain Barometer. Inspection and supplier-audit data covering sourcing activity during 2025.
• QIMA — Q2 and Q3 2026 Supply Chain Barometers. Current indicators of 2026 sourcing shifts.
• Textile Exchange — Materials Market Report 2025. Global fiber and materials production statistics.
• United States Fashion Industry Association — 2025 Fashion Industry Benchmarking Study. Apparel sourcing and diversification data from U.S. fashion companies.
• 6sense — 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report. Global study of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers examining vendor selection, shortlists and LLM usage.
• Semrush — How AI Tools Shape the B2B Buying Process, 2026. Survey of 643 U.S. B2B professionals; detailed AI findings based on 519 AI users.
• Gartner — B2B Buyer AI Research, May 2026. Survey of 645 B2B buyers conducted in August–September 2025.
• Google — AI Search usage and behavior, 2025–2026. Official data covering AI Overviews, AI Mode adoption and query behavior.

Last updated: August 2026.