May 22 Reuters French luxury group LVMH will deepen its partnership with Alibaba to leverage the firm39;s cloud and artificial intelligence capacities and boost its presence in China, the companies said on Wednesday.

The world39;s biggest luxury group, and the Chinese ecommerce giant first forged a partnership in 2019. The reinforced ties come as luxury companies redouble efforts to cater to shoppers in China, where demand has been dampened by a property crisis and high youth unemployment.

The partnership also illustrates the growing focus of the high end luxury brands on improving online shopping, even as they invest in evermore sophisticated physical retail stores.

It comes as the Chinese tech company the country39;s largest by market share seeks to focus on its core businesses including ecommerce in its domestic market.

Along with rival JD.com, Alibaba is facing competition from lowprice and discountfocused platforms such as PDD Holdings39; Pinduoduo and ByteDanceowned Douyin.

The reinforcement of our partnership will help us to further accelerate our omnichannel business growth, said Stephane Bianchi, group managing director of LVMH, referring to various shopping avenues both instore and online.

LVMH has around 30 brands on Luxury Pavilion, the high end site on Alibaba39;s Tmall shopping platform, including jewellery houses Chaumet and Tiffany, which recently joined the platform, highlighting the embrace of digital channels by even the most traditional of…