Perhaps it would be better to export a function that returns a reference - like this

package Example;

use strict;
use warnings;

use Exporter;
our @ISA = qw(Exporter);

our @EXPORT = qw(make_reference);

sub make_reference {
 ...
 return \$scalar_thing;
# or
 return \@array_thing;
# or
 return \%hash_thing;
# or
 return \&code_thing;
# or
 return \*glob_thing;
# or [], or {}
}
1;
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Perl's OO paradigm works like this - constructors return blessed references, binding the reference to a package/module.