Exporting (through Exporter or otherwise) comes in two parts. The code to export needs to declare what it will export. That's what using Exporter and populating @EXPORT or @EXPORT_OK does for you.

The code that wants to import also must do something -- namely, asking the other code to import stuff. If you require MODULE, you need to call MODULE->import(). If you use MODULE, Perl will call import() automatically.

Where did import() come from in MODULE? It came from using Exporter. If you'd require()d Exporter, you'd have had to call Exporter->import().

Does that help?