In a century-old commercial pedestrian street in Shanghai, a quiet transformation is taking place. Along this 1.2-kilometer-long street, there are 37 historical buildings under protection, and 80% of the shops are located on the second floor or above. With the rise of the "immersive consumption" trend, a harsh reality gradually emerged: The loss rate of young consumers due to "being too lazy to climb the stairs" reached 45%. Elderly customers suffered an average of 23 incidents of falling in the fitting rooms each year. What's even more embarrassing is that a certain popular tea-drinking brand, due to insufficient foot traffic in its second-floor store, was forced to pay a high penalty and terminate the contract prematurely.

Ms. Chen, the director of the neighborhood management committee, witnessed the declining annual revenue.Finally, in 2024, she initiated the "elevator access" renovation plan. However, she never expected that this would turn out to be a complex game involving historical preservation, commercial logic, and consumer psychology.

Ms. Chen's initial renovation plan was highly commercial in nature: installing sightseeing elevators on the exterior facades of each building to create an "airborne shopping corridor". When the design drawings were made public, they immediately sparked intense controversy - heritage protection experts pointed out that the elevator steel structure would damage the "veranda-style" architectural style; merchants were concerned that the elevators would divert foot traffic from the first floor; what was even more troublesome was that the load-bearing walls of a century-old mansion could not support the weight of the elevator shaft due to their age.

The "glass curtain wall elevator" proposal put forward by a certain elevator manufacturer solved the structural problem, but it was criticized for reflecting sunlight and affecting the lives of surrounding residents. Meanwhile, the "indoor spiral staircase elevator" was opposed by the merchants collectively because it occupied the commercial space. When Ms. Chen attempted to adjust the plan, she discovered a new problem: the historical building had insufficient power load, and the operation of traditional elevators would cause frequent power outages throughout the entire building.

The "White Paper on Vertical Transportation in Commercial Buildings" released by the China Department Store and Shopping Center Association in 2023 shows that in the existing elevator renovation projects of commercial buildings across the country, 76% have the problem of "demand mismatch". Specifically, it manifests as:

Flow distribution imbalance: 63% of the renovated elevators actually exacerbated the uneven flow of passengers on different floors. A statistics from a certain shopping center showed that the new elevators led to a 18% decrease in the passenger flow on the second floor, while the passenger flow on the fifth floor only increased by 5%;

Severe experience fragmentation: 41% of the elevators were disconnected from the store layout. Consumers had to walk 200 meters to reach the target store. In a certain popular shopping mall, the "cross-floor elevator" due to unclear signs, caused 30% of the customers to give up consumption in the maze-like corridor;

Unsolvable cost recovery: The daily operating cost of commercial elevators is 10 times that of household elevators, but 78% of the projects have not established a "traffic monetization" mechanism; A statistics from a certain commercial street showed that it would take 12 years for the investment in elevator renovation to recover the cost through rent growth.

After experiencing three rejections of the plans, Ms. Chen's team finally adopted an innovative model - collaborating with a technology company to develop a "invisible vertical transportation system". This case reveals the three core logics of upgrading commercial elevators:

Space integration technology: Using a "magnetic levitation track + movable car" design, the elevator track is hidden within the architectural decorative lines, and the car can freely switch between transparent and frosted modes. During operation, it blends seamlessly with the historical architectural style;

Flow operation thinking: Setting an "AR try-on mirror" inside the elevator, consumers can scan the code to virtually try on the clothing of merchants on the second floor; the system intelligently recommends floors based on consumption data, such as detecting young female passengers, automatically pushing out discount information for the beauty floor;

Energy symbiosis system: Utilizing the gravitational potential energy generated by elevator ascents to generate electricity, combined with the building's photovoltaic exterior walls, achieving self-sufficiency in energy; statistics from a certain pilot building show that the energy consumption of its vertical transportation system has decreased by 65% compared to before the renovation.

Nowadays, this commercial street's elevators have become a new consumption landmark: The cabins are equipped with an intelligent fragrance system that releases different scents based on the floor theme (the second floor has floral fragrance, and the third floor has coffee fragrance); when the elevator arrives, the floor projects the light and shadow of the merchant's logo to guide passengers; the most amazing feature is that the elevator operation data is connected with the neighborhood CRM system. When it detects that regular customers enter, it will automatically push exclusive discounts for their preferred brands.

This elevator revolution made Ms. Chen deeply realize that in the era of the experience economy, elevators are no longer merely cold transportation devices; instead, they have become the nerve hubs that connect space, flow, and commercial value. When commercial streets start designing elevators for "every second of consumption experience", those previously overlooked technical details will eventually become the key variables that reshape the urban consumption ecosystem.