Game guys play their hand and, just maybe, help revive a downtown

Tiki Tiki Board Games' owners are celebrating a big win, but not the kind accomplished with dice, lettered tiles, or metal playing pieces resembling Scottie dogs and top hats.

Their recently concluded Kickstarter campaign raised $14,662, nearly twice as much as the minimum they set out to raise.

That should be great not only for business, but also for revitalization in Woodbury, the Gloucester County seat in search of its past downtown vibrancy.

The cornerstone of Tiki Tiki's strategy is a well-known corner property: the old Polsky's Army Navy store at South Broad Street and East Barber Avenue.

Built in 1901, the two-story, 9,950-square-foot commanding presence of brick and floor-to-ceiling windows is a historic marker of sorts, known to generations of South Jersey residents. For the last eight years, it has sat largely vacant but for eight apartments upstairs.

On the 5,800-square-foot ground floor, Tiki Tiki partners Ryan Morrison, Ryan Harbinson and Tyler Ager plan a new retail outpost, an events hot spot, and a business incubator, using $30,000 to $40,000 in personal funds and the money raised through Kickstarter to pay for the retrofit.

It will be the biggest expansion yet for a small business with tech beginnings that found lucrative opportunity in a no-tech field.

"Board games are really big," said Morrison, 42, of Woodbury Heights, who is also a software engineer at a defense contractor and an adjunct professor of game design at Camden County College. "This geek culture is . . . so sick of being digitally connected all the time."

With less than $100,000 in annual sales, Tiki Tiki sells and rents used and new board games and hosts nightly events - including game playing, classes on new games, and magic acts - from a 1,100-square-foot store a half-block from Polsky's.

Its current location stocks more than 3,500 games and can accommodate two dozen players comfortably. Polsky's will have capacity for 64 players at dining room tables - the traditional board-game arena.

"The dining room table was the first entertainment center," said Harbinson, 33, of Williamstown, a sales director at a local printing company.

Ager, 30, will move into one of the apartments above the new store, supervising it full time.

Events have been a strong driver of business growth, attracting mostly customers from a 30-mile radius, though occasionally from as far as Brooklyn and Richmond, Va.

This center of profitable fun - though how much, they won't say - emerged from another business started by Morrison, Harbinson and Ager in 2009 in Sewell: Island Officials L.L.C., a software company that designs video games and websites.

Woodbury's cheaper rent was appealing, but the town required businesses in zoned retail space to actually sell something. As board-game enthusiasts and collectors, Morrison, Harbinson and Ager decided to start selling games to be able to move Island Officials to Woodbury in 2011.

"It was kind of our legal front," Morrison said of the game store. "All of a sudden, we started making money."

"One month," Harbinson said, "we sold 40 games."

Continued growth prompted a move next door on South Broad Street in 2013, to a property more than 13 times the space Tiki Tiki had been in. It's from that property the business will move as early as September, depending on the remodeling pace at Polsky's, under a three-year lease.

Along with the sales area, game-playing space, and offices for Island Officials, which now has about $200,000 in annual revenue, 27 rental lockers ($50 for six months, $100 for a year, $150 with a nameplate) will be available for players who don't want to lug home their Monopoly, Dice Masters, and Settlers of Catan games.

Four early-stage retail businesses will be guests of the incubator, to see whether they can "sustain themselves in our current cityscape," Morrison said.

At the Woodbury Old City Restoration Committee, a nonprofit focused on downtown revitalization, board member Mark Knight is hoping Tiki Tiki's new complex "will open eyes to the opportunities in Woodbury for other businesses to come downtown and not feel threatened by the vacancies that are there."

Property owner John Coppola is renting out the Polsky's space "below market," in part to help ignite a rebirth, he said:

"I'm banking on a long-term turnaround."

dmastrull@phillynews.com

215-854-2466@dmastrull