Cortland Finds Success with In-Sourcing from China

In 2012, Steven DeFrancis found himself buying last-minute plane tickets to send his EVP of construction, Clayton Landers, on a wild goose chase across China to track down an order of cabinets. Cortland Partners had recently switched to sourcing building materials from Asia to keep a lid on development costs and hired an importer to help out. For the first few orders, it worked just fine—until it didn’t.