Nearly a century after its founding, the Garaventa Lift Group continues to be a global leader in mobility and accessibility solutions and services that meet people’s real needs.
Back in 1928, young Karl Garaventa pioneered ropeways to transport logs across Switzerland’s rugged mountains. This carved a path for cable cars, global expansion, elevators, and lift solutions, ultimately making life more accessible and inclusive for everyone. As an industry pioneer, Garaventa Lift built the first tramway in Palisades Tahoe (then Squaw Valley) in 1967. About 10 years later, the company installed the first wheelchair lift in America, a dozen years before the Americans with Disabilities Act became law.
Expanding into other countries, including Canada, in the mid-70s, Garaventa Lift has grown organically and through acquisitions, and began manufacturing home elevators in 2008. In 2018, Garaventa Lift became part of a TSX-listed group when it was acquired by Savaria.
Investing in people and products
Over the decades, Garaventa Lift has built a reputation for quality, innovation, and service that exceeds customer expectations. The company’s lift solutions are found everywhere, including private homes, places of worship, schools, train stations, and commercial and office buildings. No matter where the company’s custom-made products are located, one thing remains the same: Garaventa Lift’s unwavering commitment to its customers.
“Garaventa Lift employees remind each other that the products we build have a purpose: helping people,” says Senior Regional Sales Manager, Kari Collins, from the company’s Canadian operations in Surrey, British Columbia. “We are enabling people to stay in their homes and to move throughout the world in public spaces. We are breaking down barriers, and that’s truly felt from the top down. Those messages are being shared and heard continuously. We take pride in what we do because we know we are not just building the widget, we are not just building ‘something’—we are creating products that help people in their day-to-day lives.”
The world is very different today from when Collins joined Garaventa Lift 33 years ago. Not only has lift technology advanced, but attitudes toward women in the workplace have changed. When Collins joined, the lift industry was male-dominated. Today, the company has more women on the shop floor, working as lead hands, office managers, and supervisors.
“We are very progressive that way,” says Collins, who supports women in the sector and advocates for their interests. Starting as a product designer, she has been responsible for product management, product releases, product engineering, scheduling, production, and inside sales with a focus on architects. Today, she is Garaventa Lift’s first and only senior regional manager, heading a team of regional managers.
Collins is not alone in reaching 30-plus years with the company. Garaventa Lift is known for retaining its staff because of how well it treats them. Senior employees are valued for their wealth of experience, which they readily share with new workers, helping to make Garaventa Lift a great place to work and grow. And the management team has a strong, family-first approach with an emphasis on work-life balance. Support for employees starts at the top.
“What has made me successful at Garaventa Lift is being given opportunities to step forward, take the lead, and develop,” Collins says, “and to really strengthen my confidence, not just as an employee, but as a person. I’ve really been given opportunities. Some of them were scary, but you do become comfortable with being uncomfortable. That piqued my interest enough to make me stay as long as I have. So I give thanks to the mentors I’ve had at the company for these opportunities, and for letting me see what I can do with them.”
Adapting to change
Since no two locations are the same, all Garaventa Lift products are precisely measured, designed, custom-manufactured, and installed. Serving clients in four markets—residential lifestyles, public accessibility, residential accessibility, and independent living—Garaventa Lift has seen shifting trends in recent years, including technology and generational changes, such as the emergence of two audiences for its lift products and solutions. There are those whose loved ones are in wheelchairs and need to manoeuvre around the house; other buyers, perhaps in their 40s, are thinking ahead to their golden years and futureproofing their homes for when accessibility becomes a challenge. “We need to adapt to both and cater to what they are looking for,” says Collins.
“When the corporation was created, there was very much a focus on that generational change and how to maintain accessibility for everyone,” says Brett Taylor, Vice President of Operations. “How that has grown and evolved has been quite significant.” Today, many customers want residential elevators that are not just functional but also beautify their homes or serve as conversation pieces. Many homeowners today want them installed in see-through glass enclosures, often with visible mechanical components for an interesting industrial look; some buyers are choosing bold circular designs and other imaginative solutions.
“We have a range of products that are attainable for everyone, from entry-level to something quite fluid,” says Taylor. “And I think it’s very interesting, because it covers a large spectrum, allowing homeowners to be creative and realize their design vision.”
Today, not only homeowners but architects and builders are incorporating accessibility products into their designs for everything from high-end homes to rental housing. With real estate becoming more expensive, people are building up, not out, and customers want elevators for everything from moving Christmas decorations downstairs to lugging vacation luggage.
“In North America, it’s more vertical now,” Collins explains. “You could call it a luxury, having this type of equipment, but when you’re hauling vacation suitcases up and down four floors, it feels less like a luxury than a necessity.” Garaventa Lift was recently behind the installation of 150 elevators for a 75-unit townhome project. “They are building forward, looking at who’s going to be buying these places and building it right into the design on the ground floor.”
Some homeowners plan inventively for future mobility needs by creating stacked closets in their houses. By designing a series of corresponding closets or cabinets on each floor, lined up on top of each other, a hoistway can be created. When needed, the closets/cabinets can be removed, and an elevator installed in the vertical stack.
Garaventa Lift recently worked with one of its partners on a glass elevator in an enclosed hoistway. Instead of a plain background, a muralist painted ocean scenery on the inside of the hoistway. As the elevators went up and down, anything below the upper landing was ‘underwater.’ The lower the elevator went, the darker the ‘water,’ complete with sea creatures at the bottom. “They even had a little mermaid song playing,” says Collins. “Our products are as imaginative as you want them to be—or as simple.”
Embracing technology
Just as markets are changing, so is Garaventa Lift’s approach to technology. The company is brilliant at listening to its customers, many of whom grew up with technology and are requesting elevators and accessibility devices with the newest state-of-the-art features. Even in the design phase, many customers prefer to see videos of elevators in use and virtually explore their designs and features, so Garaventa Lift gives them the tools to create their own 2D and 3D renderings.
Through the company’s innovative Design Your Own Elevator Cab tool, clients can select colours and upgrades, fixtures, lights, handrails, gates, and more. Many of these sophisticated sales aids trace their development to the pandemic, when homeowners couldn’t visit showrooms and went online for products and ideas. “Virtual design tools are fantastic, because they allow people to see what the product will look like in their home, with the features they want,” Taylor explains. “And this is important for consumers right now, helping them get what they want for their money and being able to do it from their own home.”
In manufacturing, the team has introduced robotics and autonomous running cells in recent years. This allows Garaventa Lift to program in advance and run equipment without human intervention. “The factory scene is changing globally. To maintain that competitive edge and to attract talent, you need to have technology,” says Taylor. This investment will see the company become faster, more effective, and more cost-competitive. “Our product has always been and will continue to be hand-built, by trained and qualified individuals that build in quality with ownership,” says Taylor.
And the company’s moves haven’t gone unnoticed in the industry. Recently, Garaventa Lift was awarded the 2024 EW Ellies Award for Best Supplier – Accessibility by NAEC, the National Association of Elevator Contractors. “It’s like a Grammy Award,” says Constantine Nip, Sales and Marketing Director. “The 2024 EW Ellies Award reinforces our mission to make every space accessible and inclusive, ensuring that everyone can navigate their environment with ease and dignity.”
Looking forward
With its eye on the road ahead, Garaventa Lift is hiring Red Seal workers to maintain its equipment, which include machinists, electricians, and millwrights, and maintains an apprenticeship program, aiming to build up the future workforce. From an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standpoint, the company has invested in its paint powder process line and can recover 100 percent of powder waste. “This is something we didn’t have before,” Taylor shares. “We’re being considerate of the environment, reuse, and recycling. We also have LED lighting in our products now instead of any halogen, which means less energy consumption. And we have different options in our elevator products—there’s hydraulic, which uses oil, but a lot of people are switching over to electric with servo drives. So we have that option available for our customers as well, producing a smaller environmental footprint.”
As technology, design preferences, and environmental priorities evolve, Garaventa Lift continues to adapt, proving that progress happens when a company listens closely, invests boldly, and never loses sight of the people it serves. Nearly a century after Karl Garaventa first engineered ways to move people and goods across impossible terrain, the company that bears his name continues to embrace that same spirit of ingenuity and commitment to improving lives. With its blend of craftsmanship, creativity, and compassion, Garaventa Lift is poised to carry its legacy of lifting communities well into the next century.
