Were there any other store brands in disguise like Victa Monaro?
Quite possibly, but it's a bit difficult to work out retrospectively!
About all we have to go by, is the model names listed in this doco;
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/pages/Victa/Models/Models_1970_1991.pdfAs 'Monaro'
doesn't appear there, it was a 'storebrand label' for sure.
Victa seem to have largely departed the individual 'storebrand label' sales model in the early-mid 1980's, around the time of the introduction of the PowerTorque engine. The exception being the Craftsman brand.
Two from the late 1970s early 1980s era I have come across that I suspect were at least non dealer retail models like the mid price positioned high arch Pace mentioned, were the low arch Victa Commodore and the 125cc Victa 2 Stroke High Arch and possibly the Victa Corsair (which I believe ended up being the same as the Victa Corvette at the end).
Have a look through that doco linked above. It's scanned as images though, so a text search doesn't work.
It would seem that the mower dealers in the "Monaro era" only sold models from the official Victa catalogue such as the Corvette, Silver streak, Mustang and self propelled model.
Yes, there was a fairly clear distinction back then, between servicing dealers and retailers. The servicing dealers had the full 'Victa brand' catalogue range, and the non-servicing retailers had the lower-priced second-tier brands and 'storebrands'.
There was also the MSAA mower dealer store branding to add to confusion, as well as Victa catalogue models probably available in some non dealer outlets.
When the retailer buying groups got into the act, their bulk purchasing power gave them a significant price advantage over individual servicing dealers.
The MSAA became the dealers' buying group, so that they could offer 'second-tier' mowers under their exclusive 'Craftsman' storebrand, as well as the premium range models. The Victa Craftsman mowers were very competitively priced against the retail chains' storebrands, in the 1970s.
Victa, Rover, Masport and SupaSwift all made mowers under the Craftsman banner for the MSAA.
There were very few non-dealer outlets for the top-line Victa range in those days. AFAIK, those few were hardware chain branches [e.g. McEwans in Vic, Nock & Kirby in NSW] who offered servicing at that store.
It was certainly a different era back then.
Well, in hindsight it was a time of transition.
From mowers being repairable durable goods, which were largely sold by servicing dealers, towards the current situation - most of them are throwaway items, sold via 'big box' stores.
The exception is the 'commercial duty' models, marketed through the remaining servicing dealers to the contractor/council market.
