System and method for predicting the sales behavior of a new item

A system comprising:

• a user input device;
• a display device;
• one or more processing modules;
• and
• one or more non-transitory storage modules storing computing instructions configured to run on the one or more processing modules and perform the acts of:
• receiving a first matrix including feature information for a plurality of stock keeping units (SKUs), each row of the first matrix containing information about a single SKU;
• receiving a second matrix including sales information for the plurality of SKUs, each row of the second matrix containing information about a single SKU;
• dividing the first matrix into a first subset of the first matrix and a second subset of the first matrix, based on the second matrix;
• decomposing the first subset of the first matrix to find weights for various features in subset of the first matrix, the weights representing a relative importance of each such feature;
• using the weights of the first subset of the first matrix to predict sales of SKUs that are located in the second subset of the first matrix;
• and
• ordering inventory based on the sales predictions of SKUs that are located in the second subset of the first matrix.