The most common mistake dye and pigment salespeople make isn't failing to explain the product clearly — it's selling "dyes" and "pigments" as if they were the same thing to the same set of customers, and ending up not really breaking into either market. In her first two years selling organic pigments, Sister Lin's customer list was full of printing and dyeing mills in Shaoxing and Nantong. She'd call and ask, only to find out they used reactive dyes and had no use for organic pigments at all. Half a year wasted before she understood: printing and dyeing mills want dyes, while pigments' real big customers are in the 68,000 plastics and paper factories — a pool larger than the whole country's printing-and-dyeing-plus-knitting mills combined, yet almost no pigment salesperson has ever systematically developed it.
In Tianxia Gongchang's factory records, the downstream of dyes and pigments is split into five sub-pools by colorant substrate, and the national in-operation factory count adds up to 144,293. But these five sub-pools have completely different colorant needs — whether they use dyes or pigments, which formulation, and who holds the purchasing decision — each sub-pool runs on its own separate development logic.
Two Camps, Five Customer Maps
Chemically, both dyes and pigments can color materials, but they work in entirely different ways: dyes dissolve into a medium and penetrate the fiber, while pigments disperse as particles within the substrate. This difference determines two completely separate customer groups.
Tianxia Gongchang's statistics on the five main downstream sub-pools for dyes and pigments are as follows:
| Downstream sub-pool | National in-operation factories | Colorant demand direction |
|---|---|---|
| Plastic products / paper | 68,196 | Organic pigments / inorganic pigments / color pastes — the pigment camp's main battlefield |
| Cotton spinning / printing & dyeing | 34,527 | Reactive dyes / disperse dyes — the dye camp's core pool |
| Knitting | 28,063 | Mainly reactive dyes, with color pastes used for some color matching |
| Coatings / inks | 12,352 | Organic pigments / carbon black / color pastes — the pigment camp's supplementary pool |
| Man-made fiber / dyeing | 5,318 | Disperse dyes — a high-precision dye pool |
The most counterintuitive figure in this set is the first row: 68,196 plastics and paper factories, more than the three dye-camp pools combined (cotton printing & dyeing + knitting + man-made fiber dyeing = 67,908). Pigment sales' largest pool isn't coatings, and it isn't inks — it's plastics. Injection-molded parts, blow-molded bottles, film, and pipe all need batch coloring, and with frequent color changeovers and a wide mix of product types, it's the track where pigment salespeople can most easily build a repeat-order rhythm.
The Dye Camp: How to Enter the Three Textile Printing & Dyeing Sub-Pools
For salespeople selling dyes (reactive dyes, disperse dyes, acid dyes), the main battlefield is the three pools of cotton printing & dyeing, knitting, and man-made fiber dyeing, totaling 67,908 factories. But the distribution logic differs a lot across these three pools.
For cotton printing & dyeing (34,527 factories), the provincial centers of gravity are Jiangsu (12,973), Zhejiang (5,853), and Guangdong (5,829); at the city level, Suzhou leads by far with 5,556, followed by Nantong (2,275), Foshan (1,882), and Wuxi (1,779). For salespeople selling reactive dyes, the Suzhou–Nantong corridor is the densest development zone — a single business trip there can fill two full days of visits.
The map for knitting (28,063 factories) looks completely different. This pool is extremely concentrated — Shaoxing alone has 7,632 factories and Jiaxing has 4,491, and the two cities together account for more than 43% of the country's knitting mills. If a dye salesperson hasn't thoroughly covered Shaoxing and Jiaxing, it's hard to say they're really working the knitting pool. Zhejiang province accounts for 58% of the country's knitting mills (16,387), making it the true provincial center.
Man-made fiber printing & dyeing (5,318 factories) is the smallest of the three pools, but the most concentrated. Suzhou stands out alone with 1,680 factories and is the main hub for man-made fiber dyeing — entering this pool lets you keep your travel route almost entirely within a radius centered on Suzhou. For a disperse-dye salesperson wanting to build density in the man-made fiber track, Suzhou is the unavoidable first stop.
The Pigment Camp: A City Map of the 68,000 Plastics and Paper Factories
In the 68,196-factory pigment mega-pool of plastic products and paper, Guangdong leads the provincial distribution with 22,102, followed by Zhejiang (12,423) and Jiangsu (11,233). At the city level, Dongguan leads with 7,481, and Ningbo (4,210), Suzhou (3,582), Foshan (3,386), and Taizhou (2,247) form the second tier.
One feature of this pool is worth calling out on its own: Dongguan's plastics factories are extremely dispersed, dominated by small and mid-sized injection-molded-parts and blow-molded-packaging factories. Each one uses a modest amount of pigment per month, but factory density is high and color-change requests are frequent — a color-paste salesperson in Dongguan can often make dense visits to a dozen-plus target factories along a single route. Ningbo and Taizhou's plastic-parts factories lean toward auto parts and appliance housings, which demand higher color stability and weatherability, making them a good fit for pitching high-performance organic pigment grades.
Coatings and inks (12,352 factories) form the pigment camp's second supplementary pool, led by Guangdong (2,631) and Zhejiang (1,361), but distribution is more scattered at the city level, with Foshan (618) the most concentrated single-city point. Purchasing decisions in this pool usually sit with R&D or color-matching engineers, so pigment salespeople entering it need to prepare more technical support material — pricing alone won't carry the conversation.
Pigment Direction ①
Organic pigments / color pastes → plastic injection-molded parts / blow-molded packaging / film
- Main concentrated cities: Dongguan, Ningbo, Suzhou, Foshan, Taizhou
- Provincial center of gravity: Guangdong / Zhejiang / Jiangsu
Pigment Direction ②
Organic pigments / carbon black → coatings / inks (industrial paint, printing ink)
- Main concentrated cities: Foshan, Dongguan, Shanghai, Zhongshan, Ningbo
- Provincial center of gravity: Guangdong / Zhejiang / Shandong
Dye Direction ③
Reactive dyes / direct dyes → cotton spinning / printing & dyeing (cotton, viscose, grey cloth)
- Main concentrated cities: Suzhou, Nantong, Foshan, Wuxi, Jiaxing
- Provincial center of gravity: Jiangsu / Zhejiang / Guangdong
Dye Direction ④
Reactive dyes / acid dyes → knitting (circular-knit fabric, weft-knitted fabric)
- Main concentrated cities: Shaoxing, Jiaxing, Jinhua, Foshan
- Provincial center of gravity: Zhejiang (58% of the national total, 16,387 factories)
Dye Direction ⑤
Disperse dyes → man-made fiber / polyester printing & dyeing (high-temperature dyeing of polyester fiber)
- Main concentrated cities: Suzhou (1,680, the densest nationwide), Shaoxing, Jiaxing
- Provincial center of gravity: Jiangsu / Zhejiang
Scale Filtering: How to Pick the Worth-Calling Batch Out of 140,000 Factories
With a downstream pool of 140,000 factories in total, dialing them all directly is impossible. Tianxia Gongchang's insured-headcount data gives an effective first-pass filtering dimension:
Factories with 0–9 insured employees make up the majority of the overall downstream, dominated by household workshops and small processing outfits. The minimum order quantity for dyes and pigments is usually tens to a few hundred kilograms, and these micro-factories' monthly purchase volume often can't cover the logistics cost of a formal delivery — the return on developing them is extremely low.
Factories with 10–49 insured employees are the core mid-tier segment. Plastics, printing-and-dyeing, and knitting factories at this scale typically have steady dye and pigment purchasing needs, and purchasing decisions mostly sit with the plant manager or technical lead, making them highly reachable through cold outreach. Factories with 50+ insured employees have entered a formal procurement process — the decision cycle is relatively longer, but per-order value and repeat-purchase stability are better.
Pulling out just the plastics and paper factories with 10+ insured employees on Tianxia Gongchang, Dongguan alone drops to a few thousand rather than 7,481 — the list immediately becomes dense enough to plan a business trip around, instead of a scatter plot covering the whole province.
Development Route: Pick a Camp First, Then Lock In Cities, Then Cut by Scale
Based on the data above, customer development for dye and pigment sales can be broken into three steps:
Step one — decide whether you're selling dyes or pigments, and don't mix them up. The dye camp's main battlefield is the textile printing-and-dyeing system (cotton printing & dyeing + knitting + man-made fiber dyeing, 67,908 factories); the pigment camp's main battlefield is the plastics-and-paper system (68,196 factories) plus the coatings-and-inks supplementary pool (12,352 factories). The customer profiles, visit scripts, and technical support materials for the two camps are completely different — mixing them together will hurt performance on both sides.
Step two — lock in cities and maximize your travel density. Dye salespeople should prioritize Suzhou + Nantong (the cotton printing-and-dyeing corridor) and Shaoxing + Jiaxing (the knitting cluster belt); pigment salespeople should prioritize Dongguan (the highest density of injection-molded parts) and Ningbo + Taizhou (auto-parts and appliance-housing plastic parts). Before each trip, filter on Tianxia Gongchang by city + sub-industry, export the list of factories with 10+ insured employees, then sort by registered capital to prioritize visits.
Step three — once inside, work backward from the colorant substrate to the product angle. With a cotton printing-and-dyeing mill, ask about their current reactive-dye fixation process and usage volume; with a knitting mill, ask about the color range for circular-knit fabric and color-matching needs; with an injection-molding factory, ask whether they use color masterbatch or liquid color paste, and whether the current pigment's heat-resistance grade meets their molding temperature. Let technical questions build trust first, and let price negotiation follow.
5 Questions to Check Before You Leave
- Is this trip's target factory in the dye camp (printing & dyeing / knitting / man-made fiber) or the pigment camp (plastics / coatings / inks)? Have samples and technical materials for the two categories been prepared separately?
- In the target city, after filtering on Tianxia Gongchang by sub-industry + insured headcount ≥ 10, how many factories are actually there? Is the route sequenced by geography to avoid doubling back across the city?
- For the injection-molding factory you're visiting, does the customer currently use color masterbatch or liquid color paste? Does the sample formulation you're bringing match their processing equipment?
- In your knitting-factory customer list, have you built Shaoxing and Jiaxing into a separate pool? These two cities together account for more than 43% of the country's knitting mills and are worth a dedicated trip on their own.
- Have you already crossed out the micro-factories on your list with fewer than 10 insured employees — or are you still calling down the full list and burning time on customers whose monthly purchase volume doesn't even fill a single drum of pigment?
Use Tianxia Gongchang to Filter This List
The most expensive part of selling dyes and pigments isn't the sample cost — it's the travel expense and time spent on "getting the colorant substrate wrong and visiting a factory that has no use for this kind of product." Company lists exported from certain lookup platforms and business-registry sites by keywords like "pigment" or "dye" are mixed with a large number of traders, chemical distributors, and deregistered shells — the person who picks up isn't a factory buyer at all.
The 4.8 million+ factory records on Tianxia Gongchang only include enterprises actually doing real manufacturing. By splitting the downstream into five pools by sub-industry code — cotton printing & dyeing, knitting, man-made fiber, plastic products, coatings & inks — and layering on city + insured-headcount filters, what comes out is a list of factories that genuinely use colorants and are large enough for stable purchasing.
- Main dye pool: cotton printing & dyeing, 34,527 factories (Suzhou / Nantong / Jiaxing are the densest)
- Knitting, 28,063 factories: Shaoxing + Jiaxing together account for over 43% — coverable in a single trip
- Pigment mega-pool: plastics / paper, 68,196 factories, with Dongguan / Ningbo / Suzhou / Taizhou as the main target cities
A Tianxia Gongchang membership is ¥768/year, covering 4.8 million+ real factories with unlimited filtering and export by industry + city + insured headcount, with business-registration and insured-headcount data synced weekly — the five downstream sub-pools can be built into separate lists, with the dye camp and pigment camp maintained independently, and worked through city by city at your own travel pace. A dye-and-pigment industry factory list on the open market is typically priced at ¥800–2,000, covers a single province or a single category, and has a contact-failure rate of over 30% after six months; a year of Tianxia Gongchang membership works out to about ¥2.1 a day, in exchange for a complete, re-filterable archive you can access anytime.
→ Filter printing-and-dyeing / pigment downstream factories on Tianxia Gongchang
→ Get a Tianxia Gongchang membership now, ¥768/year
Published by the Tianxia Gongchang Research Institute.