Can You Decorate or Resell a Trader Joe's Tote? Charms, Logos, and the Legal Question

Decorating your own tote: fine for personal use

Adding charms, pins, a Labubu, paint, or patches to a tote you own and use yourself is ordinary personal use. You're not going to "get copyrighted" for hanging a charm on your own bag. Decorate away.

Reselling the bag itself: generally allowed

Reselling a genuine tote you bought is normally fine under the "first-sale" principle — you can sell something you legally purchased. That's why eBay/Poshmark resale exists. (Whether it's worth what sellers ask is another question — see resale value.)

Where it gets risky: selling branded or decorated bags commercially

The caution zone is making a business of it: mass-buying to flip, or selling your own decorated/customized bags that carry the Trader Joe's name or logo. Using someone's trademark to sell your own product can raise trademark issues, regardless of how the base bag was acquired. Counterfeits — fakes made to look like real TJ's totes — are flatly illegal (that's the whole point of our real vs. fake guide).

Bottom line: decorate and use freely; resell a genuine bag you bought; get real legal advice before building a business around a branded item.