Co-founder Stuart Shepherd said Dotgain would only work with printers that offered excellent quality and customer service because that's what creatives most valued.
"Although price does play a part, it's not the fundamental reason why an agency will pick a printer," he told ProPrint.
Agencies use Dotgain to request quotes and then wait for printers to reply within a specified time. Dotgain takes 3-5% of any sale, he said.
Shepherd said Dotgain would have a limited panel of 20-30 printers in each state covering digital, offset, large format and web. Printers will usually have to be recommended by an agency to be invited on to the panel, although they can also nominate themselves and submit to an evaluation process, he said.
Dotgain launched in Victoria in early June and will next move on to New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.
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Shepherd said Victoria was almost at capacity with 25 printers and that 15 agencies had also signed up. He said the registration process was being staggered to ensure a balance in the numbers of print buyers and sellers.
He said Dotgain expected to have its Victorian and NSW print panels completed by the end of the year and to also have 60-100 agencies on its books.
Shepherd said panel members would find it easier to pick up work by being connected to "a huge pool of agencies… without having to doorknock or cold call".
He said agencies would also benefit from gaining access to a more efficient quoting process and a larger network of quality printers. He added that that would convince agencies to bring some of their work back to Australia.
Shepherd stressed that Dotgain was not a print broker. "We're a networking provider and we encourage printers to engage with agencies at any point in the process and we don't want to hinder that.
"We want to change the process from price-driven to service- and quality-driven. We don't want it to be a bidding war. We don't want printers to be competing with one another, which is part of the reason we want to cap it to only the best."
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