WooCommerce – Force selling an additional product from a given category.

Hi there,

In essence – I am looking for a solution to the following requirement of a client of mine;
They have a business model in which they would like to sell two given products together. i.e., when a user buys a shirt, they must buy a tie to go with it.

Here’s the example to hopefully make things clear

A user finds a shirt he likes from your product listings, and goes into that product page in order to buy it or look at more details.
With these details is the option to customise it with a tie, with the ability to choose from all available ties and ideally see what the combination looks like together.

That way; if a user were to buy a “White Shirt”, and then select the “Red Polka Dot Tie” to go along with it, these two products could be shown with each other to demonstrate the look, optionally as a separate uploaded image.

Does anybody know of a feasible solution to this requirement, any add-ons that offer this or similar functionality – or could point me in the right direction of how this would be most efficiently achieved.

Bear in mind that I am a web developer with decent knowledge of PHP, however have never worked with WordPress before, let alone WooCommerce – so right now creating an entire plug-in to extend WooCommerce seems infeasible and slightly over my head, but I am always willing to learn.

I have taken a look at quite a few different WooCommerce solutions, such as product bundles, force sells – but none of these offer exactly what I need, in as much as customisability and freedom of choice – as well as the main feature of being able to preview what two items will look like together before buying them.