Dinner, candy, flowers. It’s tough to be original on Valentine’s Day. Why not a beanie?

Love Your Melon sells items such as beanies, baseball caps, scarves, and jewelry. LYM’s main goal however,  is to raise awareness about childhood cancer: a whopping 50% of their proceeds are donated to cancer research.

The Valentine’s Day Beanie was released on February 6th, and at least one of the hat colors have already sold out. The hats are $30 plus shipping.

Brian Keller and Zachary Quinn started the company in a college entrepreneurship class in 2012.

“They set out to create a company that had a purpose and made a difference,” said Alex Meysman, Director of National Events at Love Your Melon. “The professors didn’t believe it would be successful, but in the first two days of sales, they had sold out.”

Keller and Quinn are now in their mid-20’s.

The original goal of Love Your Melon was to donate 45,000 hats to children battling cancer- that’s one hat for every young cancer patient in the United States. Their next goal? To donate one million dollars to pediatric cancer research and provide support for victims and their families.

In their first year of business alone, LYM generated $61,000 in revenue. In 2016, the company made over $21 million, with Cyber Monday alone generating $414,095.

Lancer Media reporter and cancer survivor, Lily Weaver, wrote an article in October, “Surviving Cancer: Witnessing to the truth and raising awareness for CureFest”. In this article, Weaver described the lack of monetary support for childhood cancer. According to the NPCF (National Pediatric Cancer Foundation), the average cost for a child to stay in a hospital for treatment is $40,000 for every stay. This is exactly the reason Love Your Melon chose childhood cancer over other types.

“We saw it as a large population of people who weren’t being supported by the structure of our society. Pediatric cancer research and support for kids battling cancer is not funded heavily and we wanted to have the largest impact possible,” said Meysman.

Not only does LYM donate half of its profits to research and support, it has also created the Campus Crew Program, which allows thousands of college students to contribute to the company’s mission by carrying out donation events and visiting cancer patients across the country.

According to the website, there are 740 different educational institutions involved in the Campus Crews. Love Your Melon calls them Superheroes because of the work they are doing.

While this crew is only open to college students, anyone can help a child in need through Request A Hat, a smaller program through the LYM website. Well-wishers can fill out a form for a childhood cancer patient, and LYM will send a hat to them. It’s free to complete, and a great way to show support for friends, family, classmates, or anyone who is in need of encouragement or just a helping hand.

If you’re looking for a special gift for a loved one on Valentine’s Day, perhaps you should look into Love Your Melon. Not only does it warm the head, it’ll warm the heart as well.