OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Finding and Swapping Wanted Victa Monaro

MF the world was a different place, China was not a manufacturing country, a bit of stuff was coming through Hong Kong but I can't recall seeing anything with "Made in China" on it, now it is hard to find anything without that written on it. Once that wave started we ended up awash with everything as well as stores selling 90% Chinese products such as Bunnings and this then slowly wiped out all the other stores that had been household names for generations selling all the Victa type store brand products

That insidious Lima agreement by that traitor Cough Whitlam, who willingly signed our life away.
Look now, Toe -nail Abbott cut all funding to keep our car industry alive and nuked our skill set for good. Tourism and services will not make for an adequate replacement.

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.pdf
As '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.

Have a look through that doco linked above. It's scanned as images though, so a text search doesn't work.
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'.
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.
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.

That pdf was very useful. Unfortunately, the code is missing from one of my mowers but I am pretty confident of two possible codes pertaining to it.
I have worked out the precise vintage of two other machines of mine and now know which mower was my nan's. THANKS!!

By the way, I appreciated your filling me in further on what went on with store brands and other mower sales practises in the 1970s Gadge. I read that with just as much interest and intrigue as the link you supplied. I just got caught up looking at the list of codes, and then seeing what was on some of my collection and had concentrated on that in my post.

De nada, MF.

I reckon it takes someone who was involved with the OPE industry in that timeframe [as I was, through my family's OPE business in Cobram, Vic], to be able to elaborate on the industry changes which were then happening. I do feel that this history should be documented, to the best of my abilities.