The battle for wealthy Chinese is moving online, with luxury brands especially hungry to win over millennials through offers on everything from limited edition fashions to white-glove delivery services. Moncler, Christian Dior, Hermes and Tiffany & Co are among those to try to grab a share of China’s USD73 billion annual luxury market. It is composed of 50 million people and growing – the largest number of wealthy people of any country in the world. They tend to be younger – and more tech savvy – than their global counterparts. The experiments to woo over this wealthy cohort are truly in their early stages. And with only a small fraction of Chinese at this point buying their luxury goods online, the battling can only get more fierce.

“Among international customers, Chinese ones are more digitally driven today,” said Remo Ruffini, Chairman and CEO of Moncler. “Technology related to consumption in China has made giant steps in recent years. Our challenge is of course to have a leading role with all these technological changes to create a new digital e-commerce experience.” Moncler now has a virtual store on social media platform WeChat, where customers can order the brand’s signature down jackets and other luxury items whose eye-popping price tags are in fact part of their appeal. It is also setting up a “pop up” store on Tmall, the e-commerce site of Alibaba Group, The online push aims to complement, rather than replace physical luxury stores. Moncler now has 27 stores in mainland China, seven in Hong Kong, one in Macao and three in Taiwan.

Luxury consumers are comparatively younger in China than their European and U.S. counterparts, according to a report by Martin Roll, which means they tend to be online junkies. More than 80% of mainland Chinese luxury consumers are between the ages of 25 and 44 – and they love to travel and buy abroad, where prices tend to be much lower and counterfeit goods less a problem than back home. Half of Chinese consumers aged 20-49 have done online luxury shopping, according to London-based market researcher Mintel Group, as reported by the South China Morning Post.