Indianola has many things to offer: Beautiful parks, a great shopping center in the Indianola town square, and plenty of restaurants. One thing that Indianola local Suzanne Hack thought was missing was a vinyl and CD shop.

Located on West 2nd Avenue in Indianola, Hack opened West Wing Vinyls, the first women-ran music shop in Iowa, in November of 2023. They wanted to make sure that they were open before the holiday season.

Since opening, Hack has felt very welcomed by the community. “I knew it, and Indianola knew that we needed a record store,” she said.

Prior to being a record store, it was a mechanical shop, and the biggest question Hack faced was: “How am I going to turn this into a music shop?”

Hack knew that she wanted a smaller shop up front with more of a storage area in the back. She was able to use the old office space as the main part of the shop and has the rest of the vinyls, CDs and cassettes cataloged in the back so she is able to grab them for customers who ask.

Before opening the shop, Hack also knew she wanted an eye-catching mural on the front of the building. She began working with local artist Megan Shipley in May of 2023.

According to Hack, April 20 is Record Store Day. In celebration of that, she hopes to announce that West Wing Vinyls will now be selling newer records.

It was brought to her attention that Walmart, and sometimes Goodwill, are the only places in town to buy records, otherwise Indianola residents are forced to take a trip to Des Moines. She always thought that most college towns have some sort of music shop and was surprised that Indianola was not one of them and never had been.

Hack wanted to put an end to this. She believes that “music is at the center of everyone’s soul, that it’s something that everybody loves to listen to.”

She finds music to be therapy. Hack used to do a lot of traveling for work and she always found herself buying some sort of music during her travels. It was something she looked for to calm her while constantly finding herself in new places and situations.

The decision to open a music shop came after she and her daughter were diagnosed with breast cancer. Since it had always been a form of therapy for her, opening a music shop “just made sense.”

Hack felt as if she had been “guided down this path.” She is a strong believer in “the things you are faced with in life can either weaken you or make you stronger,” and she chose to have her diagnosis make her stronger.

She already had a collection of her own records, but she knew that opening a music shop would require her to have a lot more than she had. Hack began reaching out to people and buying lots of records, CDs and cassettes as she found them.

West Wing Vinyls is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feel free to stop in and take part in Suzanne Hack’s “happy place.”