# Cold start demand forecasting

> Cold start demand forecasting - This accelerator provides a framework to compare several approaches
> for cold start modeling on series with limited or no history.

This Markdown file sits beside the HTML page at the same path (with a `.md` suffix). It summarizes the topic and lists links for tools and LLM context.

Companion generated at `2026-05-06T05:15:47.477763+00:00` (UTC).

## Primary page

- [Cold start demand forecasting](https://docs.datarobot.com/en/docs/api/dev-learning/accelerators/time-series/cold-start.html): Full documentation for this topic (HTML).

## Related documentation

- [Developer documentation](https://docs.datarobot.com/en/docs/api/index.html): Linked from this page.
- [Developer learning](https://docs.datarobot.com/en/docs/api/dev-learning/index.html): Linked from this page.
- [AI accelerators](https://docs.datarobot.com/en/docs/api/dev-learning/accelerators/index.html): Linked from this page.
- [Time series and specific use cases](https://docs.datarobot.com/en/docs/api/dev-learning/accelerators/time-series/index.html): Linked from this page.

## Documentation content

# Cold start demand forecasting

[Access this AI accelerator on GitHub](https://github.com/datarobot-community/ai-accelerators/blob/main/use_cases_and_horizontal_approaches/Demand_forecasting2_cold_start/End_to_end_demand_forecasting_cold_start.ipynb)

The cold start demand forecasting problem refers to the challenge of predicting future demand for a new product or service with little or no historical sales data available. This situation typically arises when a company introduces a new product or service to the market or a new product is launched in a store that is already being sold in other stores, and there is no past data available for training a machine learning model to predict future demand.

In traditional demand forecasting, historical sales data is used to train a machine learning model that can predict future demand. However, in the case of a new product, there is no historical data available. This presents a significant challenge because accurate demand forecasting is critical for making informed decisions about inventory, pricing, and marketing strategies.

This second accelerator of a three-part series on demand forecasting provides the building blocks for cold start modeling workflow on series with limited or no history.  This accelerator provides a framework to compare several approaches for cold start modeling.

The previous notebook aims to inspect and handle common data and modeling challenges, identifies common pitfalls in real-life time series data, and provides helper functions to scale experimentation with the tools mentioned above and more.

The dataset consists of 50 series (46 SKUs across 22 stores) over a 2 year period with varying series history, typical of a business releasing and removing products over time. The test dataset contains 20 additional series with little or no history which were not present in the training dataset.