Holiday shoppers better late than never; last minute and post-Christmas crowds save the season.

Many shrewd shoppers clutched their pocketbooks tightly this holiday season, holding out for last-minute sales and promotions that would allow them to save that extra buck. Some of these smart shoppers apparently held on even as Christmas came and went.

As a result, many Southland retailers are reporting enough traffic at after-Christmas sales to clear out Christmas leftovers, said local retailers.

"The day after Christmas was almost as big as the Saturday before Christmas," said Lynn Dunkley, district manager for JC Penney.

One retailer postulated that prior to Christmas many gift-givers were taking trips to the bank instead of the mall, and giving cash as presents. That way the recipient could capitalize on after-Christmas bargains, explained Mike Marevich, president of Arcadia-based Hinshaw's, an independent department store.

Business at Hinshaw's on the day after Christmas this year was 120 percent greater than business at the store on Dec. 26, 1990.

Southland shoppers procrastinated so long this season that "after Christmas could be better than before Christmas," noted Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Department.

At many stores, though, this year's post-Christmas bargains are no better than last year's were. Broadway stores held the same promotional calendar, lowering prices by the same percentage and at the same time as during 1990, according to Jo Lawley, senior vice president of marketing and sales promotion. Likewise, prices at Nordstrom have been cut by the same percentage as they were last year, said Nordstrom spokeswoman Marie Joyce.

Even many gift-givers who decided let go of their purse strings before Dec. 25 waited until the last minute to do so. Several retailers say business was rather sluggish up until the last few days before Christmas.

"It came late," Dunkley said. "The business really was condensed down to the last three days."

A similar observation was made by Bob Benson, a regional manager for K mart. "There definitely was a surge of last-minute shoppers Monday and Tuesday," he noted.

Looking at the entire holiday season up to this point, stores that specialize in selling discount merchandise are thriving, while department stores are languishing amid lackluster sales.

Holiday business at K mart stores in Southern California is between 4 percent and 9 percent greater this year than sales at comparable stores during 1990, Benson said.

Furthermore, at Adray-Mart Inc., a Van Nuys-based discount electronics retailer, 1991 holiday sales jumped 5 percent to 10 percent over last year, said marketing manager Kam Mateen.

In contrast, spokesmen for several Los Angeles area department stores, among them JC Penney, Broadway and Hinshaw's, lamented that pre-Christmas business this year was "off slightly" from sales during Christmas 1990.

"The department stores really were hurting," Kyser emphasized.

Marevich noted, for instance, that pre-Christmas business at Hinshaw's was off 6 percent to 7 percent.

Upscale stores didn't perform well either, according to Kyser, because shoppers were targeting retailers this year that were offering value and quality "at a reasonable price."

Overall, Southland retailers performed better than the struggling retailers on the East Coast, but not as well as the relatively healthy retailers in the Midwest, said Richard Giss, a partner in charge of the retail division at the Los Angeles office of accounting firm Deloitte & Touche.

Kyser elaborated: "People were generally disappointed with what happened here in Southern California. There is no sign of a retail turnaround."

Stores were also more promotional prior to Christmas this year, Stewart said. The promotions started earlier too; decorations went up at many stores in the middle of October, he added.

"It was non-stop promotions," with the result of lower prices, Kyser said.

Then there is the issue of whether some of the retailers could survive a second disappointing holiday season in a row. Christmas 1990, arriving as the economy began to falter and just before the onslaught of the Persian Gulf War, was nothing for retailers to write home about either.

Christmas 1990 was followed by a number of retailing bankruptcies, including that of Los Angeles-based Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc., parent of the Broadway and other department store chains. Long Beach-based Buffums, a department store chain that was a fixture in the Southland for 87 years, went out of business.

"If the economy doesn't pick up again pretty quickly I think there will be some stores in trouble" in 1992, Stewart said.