Carl W. Renstrom founded Tip-Top Products Company in Omaha in 1932 with just $5 capital then went looking for the next big idea — not the most conventional way to start a business during the Great Depression.  While selling door-to-door, Renstrom had crossed paths with a gentleman selling heatless liquid solder in a can. 
  Renstrom tried to convince the man to form a company with him, but when he was rebuffed, he set about replicating the unpatented solder in a squeezable tube.  He then mounted multiple tubes on a placard for easy display within stores. The solder was an immediate success and gave Renstrom the financial security to expand, but that meant he needed another big idea …
  His sister had returned from Europe with a cheaply made metal hair curler that she loved.  Similar curlers were selling in the U.S. for about 5 cents each. Again, Renstrom thought he could improve on the design and packaging. His product was called the Tip Top Easy Curler — four aluminum curlers on a card priced at 10 cents a card. Millions of women responded with their pocketbooks.
  By 1936 Renstrom filed his first of many hair product patents. He had found his niche. When WWII intervened and aluminum was at a premium, he retooled the machines that had once produced curlers to fabricate military wire reels, barbed wire throws and land mine crates, all the while experimenting with plastic.  When the war ended, he converted his line to plastic. By 1964, when Tip-Top Products Company was sold to the Rayette Co. (later named Faberge) for $25 million, Renstrom and his company were producing 650 different hair products.

                                                                                       — Diane Snider
                                                                             DCHS Board Member

Sources:
Vertical Files, Douglas County Historical Society Library Archives Center