How Craig Melvin Turned Hobby into a Family Business Benefiting Cancer (Exclusive)

Craig Melvin knows how to wax poetic. Literally, that is.

The NBC newsman, 46, exclusively tells PEOPLE that together with his family, he’s launching a candle business called Melvin Made.

The proceeds will benefit various cancer charities, including some of those that have helped Melvin’s own relatives navigate care.

“I’m really excited about it,” Melvin says. “The goal is to sell these things and raise awareness about a variety of cancers to get people talking about screenings, listening to your body and talking about family histories. This is another tool to do that.”

The candles, which are made in the U.S., are crafted with coconut oil and phthalate-free fragrances. They come in two different sizes, 10 ounce and 16 ounce, and the collection includes five different scents: Southern Office, Lindsay, Hilton Head, Pink Jasmine and Betty Jo, plus Fireside Frankincense, a sixth seasonal addition.

“One of the candle fragrances is actually named after my younger brother Ryan’s late daughter, Jasmine,” Melvin says. “It’s a nod to her, but also to him introducing me to the concept of candle making years ago.”

Melvin tells PEOPLE he lost his niece when she was just three years old to a rare form of Ewing Sarcoma.

And while he credits his brother and sister-in-law for being the first people to show him the craft, Melvin actually didn’t pick up the hobby himself until about two years ago.

“I bought a kit, and I just started making candles in the kitchen and would give them as gifts and play around with some different fragrances. And my early ones were not very good,” he says with a laugh, adding that sometimes the wick was the wrong size for the “vessel” or the candle burned unevenly.

“Whatever I’m doing, I like to get really good at it. And so I bought some books, I watched some YouTube videos, and then I met a guy named Alan Long, who is my candle Sherpa, and he’s out of Richmond, Virginia,” Melvin further explains. “I went down to visit his place where he pours, and that was the fuel that added to the fire.”

Melvin’s got the candle-making lingo down — using words like “pours” and “vessel” to describe what he calls his “luddite” hobby. The newsman is all in, talking the talk and walking the walk so that every Melvin Made candle is up to par.

And, just as the Pink Jasmine candle honors his late niece’s memory, all of the candles in the collection have a special, family-oriented meaning.

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“The Lindsay, which I think may end up being one of the two most popular, is named after my wife because her father is a three-time cancer survivor. So it’s a nod to her dad, Chet, and the box is yellow because that’s her favorite color,” Melvin says of his spouse, fellow broadcaster Lindsay Czarniak. “But it was also the first fragrance that she smelled that I was making, and she was like, ‘Oh, that’s nice. That’s good. What is that?’ So I named it after her.”

Melvin’s mother Betty Jo — another one of the candle namesakes — is a breast cancer survivor, and the family lost Melvin’s older brother, Lawrence, to colon cancer in 2020.

Melvin hosts his Bottoms Up Invitational every year to raise funds for the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, which is one of the organizations that proceeds from Melvin Made will benefit.

“This is one of those hobbies that turned into a passion for me and my family because everyone’s affected by cancer. You’d be hard-pressed to find a family not affected. I’m not trying to make money off candles, but what I think I can do is raise money for a variety of charities that are fighting cancer,” Melvin tells PEOPLE. “The goal is to use the platform and the megaphone that we have to do as much good as possible.”

For more information, visit www.MelvinMade.com.