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While an abundance of celebrities and references to Walmart founder Sam Walton gave this year’s shareholders meeting a familiar feel, there also was an unmistakable emphasis on e-commerce and social media.

A lot of companies are content to conduct their annual meetings in a hotel ballroom near their headquarters, but not Target. This year the retailer and its senior executives are schlepping east to Pittsburgh where the company’s annual meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 8 at 1:30 p.m. at a store located about five miles east of downtown Pittsburgh at 6231 Penn Avenue. According to the company, “This location allows us to showcase our current general merchandise store design in the latter stages of construction prior to opening.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — Macy’s has enjoyed strong sales momentum during the early part of this year with first-quarter same-store sales up 5.4% and the second quarter off to an even stronger start with May comps up 7.4%. There are a lot of reasons for those results, but several key supply chain initiatives have made important contributions and were recognized recently at the annual VICS Collaborative Commerce Achievement Awards.

New York City -- Children's clothing retailer Hartstrings L.L.C., owned by Maryland private-equity firm American Capital L.P., has declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company, which has 28 stores and a wholesale operation, plans to dissolve the business.

The filing comes a year after the company entered into an agreement with television personality Tori Spelling to develop a children's clothing line under the Little Maven label.

SALT LAKE CITY — Overstock.com has announced the unveiling of the O.co Coliseum, the new name of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, home to the NFL Oakland Raiders and the MLB Oakland Athletics. The O.co Coliseum signage will make its debut on June 7 when U2 performs in the facility.

According to Overstock.com, the company is using the naming of the coliseum to promote its transition to a .co domain name.

An amazing variety of people shop at Walmart stores, which is understandable given the company’s often cited statistic that 140 million people visit its stores weekly. This diversity of customers is one of the things that makes Walmart unique as this video from singer Jessica Frech cleverly illustrates in a light-hearted way. Click here to watch.

Heading into last Friday’s annual meeting, the financial community had high expectations Walmart would allocate additional funds to buy back stock, and the company didn’t disappoint. The $15 billion share repurchase authorization CFO Charles Holley announced replaced an existing $15 billion program approved one year earlier that had dwindled to just $2 billion due to the fact that Walmart was an aggressive purchaser of its own stock during the past 12 months.

It’s the time of year when retailers engage in the annual Dads and Grads promotional extravaganza, and Target is promoting the Apple iPad at $499 as a gift-giving solution.

The iPad appeared on a full-page ad in this week’s circular along with other Apple products such as the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch.

Not that dads and grads wouldn’t want an iPad, and it never hurts to feature an item that shoppers can aspire to, but the iPad would appear to be out of the price range of most gift-givers, especially where Father’s Day is concerned.