Letter from the Family
After spending a lifetime working side by side with my father, the late Ed Pastusek, leading XS Sight Systems is a dream come true. For over 30 years I had the privilege of watching him and my mother build businesses from scratch chasing the American Dream. Through trial and error, he found a path to success by focusing on customer needs, working hard, and investing in his people. My father instilled his life lessons in our company and we continue to be driven by this same passion for excellence.
Our accomplishments are possible because of the tremendous amount of heart and hard work our employees dedicate to American manufacturing and to XS Sights; thank you to those who have gone before us and for the ones who stand with us now. We are also grateful for the support of our customers, trainers, writers, firearm manufacturers, friends and countless others who continue to help and challenge us to be our best.
Today with my mother Mary and my sister Kellie, our family strives to lead an even stronger more capable team with the same family passion and traditions we were founded on. We are deeply committed to creating and manufacturing products to help the GOODGUY take care of bad situations. With this we honor and support our Law Enforcement and Military professionals who protect us at home and abroad. We highly encourage firearm training and education and are proud to support organizations and our fellow citizens who believe in our Constitution.
God Bless America.
Jon Pastusek, CEO
XS Sight Systems, Inc.
History of XS
Our company began back in early 1996 in the creative imagination of Ashley Emerson. He was dissatisfied with not only the night sights of the time but also the aperture hunting sights that were being offered as well. He had found that they were barely altered adaptations of target sights both of which had multiple drawbacks for the application and that the hunting sights were way too fragile to boot.
By 1997 he had teamed up with our late president, Ed Pastusek to form A&E Mfg. Ed's innovative manufacturing solutions were a perfect match to Ashley's ideas.
Both men shared the common belief that products should be designed based on where, when and how they are to be really used, with results from field testing taking precedence over everything else, then manufactured to the highest standard and back with a no nonsense customer service policy.
Realizing that the established way may not always be the best solution, ideas were bounced off of and information sought from experts in a wide range of fields. Experts such as Jeff Cooper, Finn Aagard, Clint Smith, James Yeager, Andy Stanford, Paul Gomez, Bill Davison, Ralph Lermayer, Giles and Ed Stock, Louis Awerbuck, Richard Mann, Hans Vang, along with countless law enforcement officers just barely scratches the surface of the enumerable peoples input that have helped XS Sights design and build the best sights for their application possible.
For handguns our sight configuration is a "V" rear blade with a dot front sight. This gives the user considerable advantages in the highly dynamic world of threat situations. The large white area around the tritium in the front sight allows the user to better see the front sight in the mid to low light conditions that are so prevalent in these situations too. The large size of our Big Dot allows unparalleled speed of user acquisition and indexing onto threats in all sorts of light and stress conditions.
Our hunting Ghost Ring Aperture and white stripe front sights give iron sight using hunters tough, fast to use sights that have proven themselves time and again over the last 20 years.
Often paired with our Ghost Ring Sights are our scope mounts. Ranging from the Clifton Scout Mount for 98 Mausers, to the Lever Scout Mounts for Marlin & Winchester rifles or our longer LeverRail for the Marlin rifle or our latest addition the Ruger Gunsite Scout Rifle Rail.
The road we have traveled the last 25 years, has been nothing if not an evolution in so many ways. Whether it has had to do with the various names of the company (Ashley Research, A&E Mfg, Ashley Outdoors, AO Sight, Express Sights XS Sight Systems or XS Sights) or in our products which we are always looking for a way to improve the performance of, Team XS looks forward to seeing what the next 25 years will bring.