Go Topless Glassware, a company started by an ISU student, recently won the Dream Big Grow Here regional competition.

Go Topless creates drinking glasses from recycled bottles. Cody Henke, senior in electrical engineering who founded the company along with Chris Perkins, acknowledges that it isn’t a new idea, but said their glasses are of higher quality than most. With the $5,000 Dream Big Grow Here grant, they will be able to purchase equipment to customize their glasses. Plus, the process is almost entirely green.

“We can repurpose it, and now that same bottle is someone’s favorite drinking glass for the next 10 years,” Henke said. 

Henke started the company at the urging of a business professor, who later became one of their first customers. He also said the Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship was an asset that helped them minimize risk and maximize the resources available at Iowa State — for example, they learned about different types of glass coatings from the materials engineering department and the safety requirements for glasses from food sciences.

“I got a ton of support from the business college when I wasn’t even a student there,” Henke said. “The resources are here, people just don’t realize it.”

Dream Big Grow Here is a grant program for certain counties in Iowa. At the regional level, Go Topless had to place in an online vote and then go before a panel of judges. Next, it will advance to the statewide competition for $10,000, to take place in March 2012.