Black Rose Records’ first day open was April 22, but owner Sean Hale has been working towards having his own store for at least 10 years. Whenever Hale, a longtime vinyl collector and a Florida native, would find a good deal on a cool record he’d buy it even if he already had a copy. For a while, he sold vinyl online via eBay and Discogs. Along the way, Hale got experience working at Gainesville’s Arrow’s Aim Records.

In 2020, Hale and his wife, Sarah Carey, relocated to Huntsville after Carey, a genomicist, got a job at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. At first, Hale worked at Gold Sprint Coffee. Looking to open a record store, Hale considered retail space in Five Points, but it was way overbudget there.

Then a space opened up at Village Center, a U-shaped strip mall at 7914 Memorial Parkway S.W. in South Huntsville. Village Center was already home to a nifty array of local businesses, including Bigfoot’s Little Donuts, gaming hub Lucky Dice Café and craft beer bar Das Stahl Bierhaus.

“It was like, oh, yeah, this makes perfect sense to put a record store in with that stuff,” Hale recalls. (Longtime Huntsvillians might recall back in the 1990s this shopping center was home to the original location of music retailer CD’s Etc.)