I second (third?) the notion of looking at your competition, especially Guitar Center, and trying to stock the stuff you wish they had in there but don't. Genz Benz, Gallien-Krueger (my local GC is pulling these off their shelves, dunno if that's a nationwide move though) especially the small heads mb200, mb500. My local GC doesn't have the Ampeg PF series, Line 6 (for bass, they have twanger gear), Harke, SWR. Along with the standbys of Fender, and Roland small amps. Oh and the Phil Jones suitcase, love to see that in a store.
I'd love to see Sansamp stuff, especially the VT and BDDI available for trying out since they get so much attention.
For basses you need some bread and butter in there, so Fender and Squier have to be on the list, along with probably Ibanez, ESP, Schecter. Stuff I don't see at GC: Lakland, Spector, Rickenbacker. Short scale basses in general.
A few general wishes from a regular noodler. Have the instruments somewhat setup. I played a sr706 the other day at GC and the G string was about 1/4" higher than the others and no one had bothered to fix it. The sr506 was perfect. Which sounds like a better value to someone off the street? Also, have tuners around. I started bringing my own little clip on neck tuner. Those are a bit pilferable, but a nice pedal you can plug into to tune up a bass to test would be really handy while comparing basses. Oh and have at least one bass strung with flatwounds for people to try, my GC doesn't have ONE so I've been waiting for a used one to come in to at least try before I lay down my $s on a set of flats.
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Oh and you can manage it, having the Carvin amps in store as testers would be AWESOME. Dunno if that's feasible though. You'd be a hero among us for pulling it off!
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Oh and the Ibanez Promethean stuff.
