thats cool that you got him to carry some good tobacco, but you probably got more people interested in fake weed and the like. My advise would be to smoke a pipe constantly, educate yourself on the tobaccos you carry and have an open tin for the customer to inspect. As far as pipes go, they're going to be a lower margin and higher investment item most likely ranging from basket pipes to maybe a few Nordings or Savinelli's, Peterson's, etc. Either way the more people see you smoking a pipe and smelling the nice aromas, the more people you can get to try out the hobby.
It seems aromatics are most popular at that type of place, but I advise sticking with 2 oz and 4 oz tins, that way you dont have full jars to look at drying out and collecting dust. Once you've established a customer base, consider carrying a few house aromatics, english, and va/VAper blends.
These are the tobacco's I would recommend stocking and smoking in store to start out:
Blue Note (only aromatic I like, maybe a good C&D Aromatic as well)
Dunhill early morning pipe, and nightcap (light and heavy english baccies)
Frog Morton (essential one here)
3 Oaks Syrian and Cyprian (awesome labels awesome baccy full english)
McClelland Legends and Wilderness (awesome labels and great baccy filling the medium english category)
Orlick Golden Sliced appears to be pretty standard, cheap and widely available (Substitute for Full virginia flake)
GLP JackKnife Plug (Virginia and burley, would be fun to have a little display under the glass showing the diff forms of cutting techniques sliced, cubed, rubbed)
Escudo (traditional old school form of VaPer)
Bulk wise I'd go with: (avail in 8 oz and 16 oz qty's to put into jars and sell by the oz)
Esoterica Margate or GLP Maltese Falcon or Westminster
GLP Union Square
Samuel Gawith Kendal Plug
McClelland 2015
not going to comment on bulk aromatic because I find most of them to be crap.
Show your boss the profit margins involved in selling by the oz, the above bulk tobacco's cost about $3-$4 an oz when bought in bulk and typically cost about 15 a 50 gram tin in stores, so it is reasonable to charge $6-$8 an ounce when buying from the bulk, especially if one can buy as low as an ounce. But if you are going to charge this much give em something good to smoke that they will be coming back for. So a 50% margin isn't too bad, and if you plan out the right merchandising ideas he may just spring for it. Some people feel more comfortable buying tobacco they can look feel touch and perhaps smoke so consider that as well.
